Free Thought Lives

Reversing the Descent of Man

On virtually every indicator that anyone might want to consider, men in Britain and various other Western states seem to be performing very badly at the moment, both for themselves and for the communities in which they live. Not that this is particularly unusual. Throughout history, men have been inclined towards being social outsiders. Their usefulness to communities varies much more than women’s, and depends greatly on the way in which social institutions define and reward their roles. Whereas most cultures seem to recognize this, in the West we have increasingly pretended that it is not the case.

And we are now paying for our mistake.

Many people are asking themselves whether some of the radical social experiments attempted in recent generations are viable in the long term, or should now be ditched. It is not too late to face up to the problem. But we have such an accumulation of policy errors to deal with that we require a thorough re-orientation of public discourse before we can expect any specific measures to have much positive effect. The sort of shift we need encompasses some key elements of the sexual division of labor, grounded in stronger marriage institutions, and linked with a conceptual unscrambling of men’s roles, both private and public.

Recognizing Sexual Difference

The first step is to acknowledge that the social orientations of men and women can never be identical. Refusal to accept this, and pursuit of interchangeability and strict equality rather than gender equity, is likely to increase differences between the sexes.

Women in all societies are more responsive to each other’s needs and more likely to see the point of a social contract. They need society more. The long and arduous process of child-rearing makes women value co-operation with others in a way that does not so readily apply to men. We are better able to get along by ourselves. Society is at heart female, and is built around shared motherhood.

In all traditional cultures there is a more or less explicit awareness of the centrality of motherhood, and of the need to create complementary roles for men to give them a comparable stake in society. We all need to feel needed by others if we are going to act responsibly towards them. Unless adult men are given clear roles and duties their attachment to society is very tenuous.

It is this need to provide men with a stake in society that has led to the emergence of patriarchy and it has two main aspects. Firstly, men are socially responsible for the support of particular women and children, usually their sexual partners and their own offspring. This makes men more like women, by giving them specific people to care about in the way that mothers have to care for their children. Secondly, they are given formal rights and duties, usually linked to “head of family” status, in society’s political and economic institutions. This increases their motivation and opportunity to carry out their family obligations.

As David Gilmore’s cross-cultural study of men shows (1990), in the small handful of cultures without patriarchy, men live a narcissistic Peter Pan existence, putting very little into the community and leaving most of the labor to women. Such societies have not developed beyond a rudimentary level, and cannot compete with their more highly organized and structured neighbors. This is why there are so few of them. They are not a suitable model for modern industrial nations to copy.

Re-jigging Equal Opportunities

Copying them, however, is what we have been doing in recent decades as attacks have mounted on the sexual division of labour. Since the Enlightenment, the philosophical doctrines of individualism have come into repeated conflict with ideas about sexual differences. During the 20th century, as the state has offered increasingly direct support to women, libertarians—especially in Protestant countries—have portrayed the patriarchy, and the role it assigns to men, as a major source of social injustice.

Eleanor Rathbone, for example, persuaded the U.K. parliament in 1945 to bypass husbands and pay family allowances to mothers, after conducting a long campaign against what she dubbed the “Turk complex.”

It is easy to see what satisfaction the institution of the dependent family gives to all sorts and conditions of men – to the tyrannous man what opportunities to tyranny, to the selfish of self-indulgence, to the generous of preening himself in the sunshine of his own generosity, to the chivalrous of feeling himself the protector of the weak. …Thus when a proposal (for direct state support of women) presents itself which is obnoxious to the hidden Turk in man, he stretches up his hand from his dwelling in the unconscious mind and the proposal disappears from the upper regions of consciousness.

Rathbone herself was mainly concerned with improving the status of motherhood, by defining it as a public role that deserved state support. But her breach of the divide between the private and public realms, and her dismissal of male family motivations (but not of female) as rooted in an “instinct of domination,” contributed to a delegitimizing of masculine roles. It was a factor in the emergence of a new statist political economy in which traditional male and female roles were deemed harmful to society, and where men who valued them were regarded as morally deviant or pathetic throwbacks.

This delegitimization has intensified since the 60s, when the emergence of the pill encouraged women to start claiming equal participation in the public realm. This development has, I believe, decisively weakened the framework of family responsibilities which underpinned men’s motivation to take on socially useful labor. Some of this is revealed in Neil Lyndon’s book, Sexual Impolitics: Heresies on sed, gender and feminism(1992):

If we didn’t have to have babies when we had regular sex, it followed that we didn’t have to get married. And if we didn’t have to support families, we didn’t have to have jobs or careers: and if we didn’t have to have careers…what might we not do? Or be? A tabula rasa of adult masculinity had been presented to us, upon which we might (we supposed) make our marks as we pleased.

It is now time to discard this legacy. It has led to a collapse not only in male participation in society, but in the private realm too, where men are increasingly reluctant to commit to the roles of husband and father. Far from leading to a more equitable distribution of labour, it has piled ever greater burdens on women.

Policies of strict gender equality are no longer what most women want—if they ever did. Many women, especially older women with experience of managing families, recognize that emphasizing men’s provider role is essential if they’re to be caring and productive members of the community. This might best be done by to encourage to strengthen the employment rights of younger women, as many of them do not have long to establish themselves in the workplace before wanting to give much of their time to running a family—while creating more employment opportunities for men aged 30 and over.

Men are often slower getting started and most women would prefer them to occupy the main breadwinning role during the arduous years of childrearing. A shift of emphasis along these lines would signal to young men that there are socially valued roles waiting for them, and offer reassurance and meaning to the growing number of them who seem to doubt it.

Prioritizing Male Work

Heavy rates of unemployment are widely seen as related to the collapse of male morale and motivation. But it is a mistake to regard joblessness in itself as the cause of men’s problems. Male unemployment is no novelty, and reached high levels in the ’30s without weakening male resolve and family commitment or readiness to retrain for new types of work. Arguably it even sharpened these.

What is new is the loss of morale and sense of purpose among men, and this is a cultural rather than an economic change, arising out of the libertarian assault on sex roles. Men are bombarded with the message that modern women value the opportunity for self-realization through work. So the chivalrous thing to do these days is for men not strive too hard to hold down a job or seek promotion, but stand aside and let women go for it themselves. This is the root of contemporary male economic and educational failure, and the reason why there are increasing numbers of unemployed men even though the total number of jobs remains stable.

It is not possible to do much about this so long as the problem is seen simply in terms of the amount of work available. Boosting employment is likely to benefit women more than men, as they are the ones presently more highly motivated (by existing or anticipated family duties) to take work seriously. We need measures which recognize the greater relative importance of work to men as their distinctive contribution to society.

One step which would be to change the nature of state support offered to men when they are out of work. Across the West, schemes have been introduced that limit state aid to the unemployed, and replaced them with training schemes and job-seekers allowances of various kinds. But these schemes still rely on the private sector to create new jobs, while reducing its capacity to generate them thanks to the need for high taxes to pay for them.

It would be more constructive to replace benefits for able-bodied job-seekers with wages for socially useful work. In some circumstances this might be “family work,” such as bringing up children. Nominally, this could be open to men or women, but in practice few men are likely to choose it or qualify for it. More significantly, it could be low-paid (or part-time) work in state enterprises.

This would initiate a valuable shift in the structure of public spending. Part of Britain’s economic malaise derives from trying to incorporate too many personal services and sources of support in the welfare state when it would be better if they were provided in the private realm. This has led to the ballooning in size of the welfare state, sucking up money that would otherwise be available for industrial investment and modernization. Redeploying taxpayers’ money into public works could get resources circulating in ways that revived men’s interest in working and supporting families at the same time as assisting industrial renewal.

Creating Real Work

Such a public employment system would only result in a re-harnessing of male energies if it offered real and useful work, and was concentrated in areas that did not require massive and sudden re-education of men. It should utilize currently wasted male labor, as well as helping to generate new jobs in the private sector—which in the last analysis would be paying for it.

Many people will be shaking their heads at this point, thinking traditional male work is a thing of the past. But this need not be true. If we treat more personal services as private realm obligations (to be negotiated within families, or paid for by families) and then look for traditional “work” there is plenty that still needs doing by men and could be paid for.

A new wave of public employment could be directed towards the renewal and maintenance of the infrastructure needed by a modern economy. For example, building an efficient public transport and communications system requires a good deal of traditional labor. Also, putting old-fashioned industries on a sustainable footing, along with measures to clean up the environment, are essential to long-term economic health and growth, and something which the state could undertake. Such a program would use massive amounts of labor of the sort men are well-suited for.

We could pay for this, in part, by reducing the benefits paid to unemployed men and slimming-down welfare bureaucracies. People fit for work but unwilling to participate in public work schemes could be given the last-ditch defense of accommodation in hostels, where most of the day-to-day labor is provided by the residents themselves. In this situation, people’s family networks would soon re-emerge as valuable sources of (reciprocal) support.

Reviving Family Networks

A general rebuilding of conventional families would produce a number of powerful reinforcements for men’s morale. At the moment, the tax systems in most Western countries create perverse incentives for women to have children outside of marriage and provide men and women with little reason to remain married. That should be addressed. Single people, in particular single childless men, should be taxed at a higher rate because they are less likely to be engaged in the reciprocal support activities of the moral economy which limit the collective liabilities of the welfare state.

The proposals outlined here will be dismissed by some people on the grounds that they would push women back into domestic drudgery. But they need not have this effect. Rather, they represent an updating of patriarchy which many women would sympathize with. It is in any case absurd to talk of pushing women back into kitchens, because the vast majority have never left, and still do by far the larger share of domestic work, even those that have male partners. The domestic liberation of women has had more to do with technology than with help from men, and insofar as that does exist, it is positively related to men’s breadwinning status, i.e., the more traditional the household, the more likely men are to help out with domestic chores.

Male breadwinning need not be the enemy of women. Once they have children, 37 percent of British women, and 48 percent of 18–39-year-old women, would actually prefer a male partner to carry the main economic burden while they perform the main family management and caring role, according to the Social Attitudes Survey.

That this is not more widely understood is largely due to the personal inclinations of most social researchers and commentators. Recent research that I have participated in myself suggests very strongly that not only are most women in favor of an updated sexual division of labor but that support for it is particularly strong among mothers.

Women who, when younger, feel that equal participation in the public realm is essential to their self-respect, tend to change their minds as their own children grow up and they find themselves becoming the linchpin in a wider family system. They are concerned at their sons’ lack of motivation, at the shortage of suitable partners for their daughters, and at the distress caused to children and older people by the general weakening of family networks.

Redistributing Employment

There is a strong class dimension to the problem of modern men, as the de-motivating effect of equal opportunities rhetoric does not affect all men equally. It is regressive in class terms. As the male provider role fades as a source of respect, men who can only realistically hope for low status work are the ones most likely to lose the will to seek jobs or retrain as old industries decline. Middle class men with more chance of interesting and prestigious jobs have incentives to succeed which need less boosting by family obligations. So they are not held back in the same way.

I believe this is a powerful factor sharpening the polarization of our society into rich and poor sectors. The division is increasingly between an elite of “two-career” families who live in affluence, and an underclass of “no-work” families, or rather, non-families, as it is mostly within this section of the population that households are breaking up, with men increasingly unemployed, living alone, dying of self-neglect and losing faith that there is a useful place for them. Women in this underclass suffer great stress and poverty too, but they keep going because they know that they have valuable roles as mothers.

Taxation policy could play a significant role here in averting broader social conflict at the same time as re-motivating men. Dual-earner households enjoy a disproportionate share of jobs and incomes, as well as tax benefits. Because they can afford double-salary mortgages, they have inflated the general level of house prices in cities. In spite of sometimes hiding behind leftish politics, they are one of the main drivers of increasing inequality.

Redeeming the Hidden Turk

Eleanor Rathbone was undoubtedly right in assuming that many men draw great strength and satisfaction from the idea that they are playing an important role in supporting their families. What makes her position, and the dismantling of the sexual division of labor which drew on ideas like it, so wrong-headed is that it renders men dispensable. In the last analysis, all societies depends on the participation of men.

Throughout history, communities have found that the most effective way to lock men into useful membership is to link their status and rewards in the wider group to their acceptance and performance of gender-defined family roles. When this connection is weakened—as it was after the French and Russian revolutions, for instance—then men’s morale and behavior deteriorates and families suffer. This is now being discovered again, and it will not be long before we will all be exhorting each other to accept men as they are, and work with the grain, and to forget ideas about how it is only “the patriarchy” that makes them different from women. Then, once again, they will become more like women.

This is an essay based on Rediscovering Familyby Geoff Dench. Geoff was a sociologist who died in 2018. This article is published with the permission of the Geoff’s family.

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“Many people are asking themselves whether some of the radical social experiments attempted in recent generations are viable in the long term, or should now be ditched.”

And these people are slimed, un-personed, and if they cannot be “shut down” via economic terror or straight-up removal from every platform newer than telephone, black-clad mobs show up at their houses with weapons.. all at the open urging of specific political parties who then receive VINDICATION of these tactics at the ballot box, unbelievable as that may seem to anyone who did not sleep through history class.

I can tell you this: if I was a young man, my plan would be:
get VERY good at a trade with automation upside (millwright/machinist?)
to work off books as much as possible (bachelor tax? Fuck off. And if I have to work on book, get gay married or declare as pre op trans, something like that)
spend the off book money,
save the on book,
retire at around 35, 40 to van life it around the West with a few hundred principle earning 7%.
Or move to Thailand etc.

Do something online to say interested & put money away for a small house in later life.

That’s what the kids call “men going their own way” or close enough.
It’s what society deserves,
and it’s the smart bet for smart young men.

I worked too hard.
Less hard than most men, didn’t half kill myself.
But too hard.

This society doesn’t deserve it.
This society deserves to fail.

This society needs to be told NO.

And as for this author?
He needs to be told: “take your shaming & your gynocentrism & shove it up your fucking ass.
Here’s a list of the things I am willing to take RESPONSIBILITY FOR that I have no AUTHORITY OVER:

Real men aren’t “immersed in self-pity.” They’re too busy out there in the real world, doing necessary and interesting things. Or do members of the nattering classes never wonder who keeps the lights on, the goods moving, the heat working in your house and provides your food, bar-coded and shrink-wrapped on demand? Yeesh!

Soy-raised “pajama boys,” OTOH . . .

The rot set in when we “divorced” sex from reproduction, which is Nature’s purpose for it. What we’re doing these days is seeking social sanction for ever more exotic permutations of narcississtic, “zipless” onanism, partnered or not. Dry-humping whomever is a substitute for social maturity and responsibility.

Yes, this is the current issue. Men are filled with bitterness and rage, and they wonder why they can’t find a mate. No one likes someone who is always angry and who thinks he’s entitled to sex. No one is entitled to sex. Finding a mate is like finding a job: you have to be good at what you do to get hired and you need to find your own place where you belong. All these men being so angry that they can’t find a woman while they spew misogynist garbage never ceases to astonish.

For all of the uninformed commenters who think that men are a bunch of guys who are “men filled with bitterness and rage, and they wonder why they can’t find a mate” you must be talking about someone other than the commenters here. The men here are not interested in finding a mate. That option includes WAY too many risks for WAY too little reward. No, the men who are commenting here know better than to sign a “contract” that basically allows the other party to check out of it whenever she wants along with most of his belongings and most of his future income (not to mention any kids he may “have”). The real problem with our society isn’t the tax structure or the society’s lack of respect for men’s contributions, it is the “legal” system that is WAY too bias against men. If marriage and family were somewhere in the ballpark of being fair to men, the dynamic would be much different. But under the current laws and policies, only a fool would agree to the conditions of what marriage offers men. So the next time you decide to deride men (again) about “being so angry that they can’t find a woman while they spew misogynist garbage” think twice. Would you enter a “contract” with someone who could take you to the cleansers at the dial of a phone call? If so, then you have absolutely no business being the “contract” in the first place.

I was sure I wasn’t alone with that plan… Pretty much a good MGTOW plan asI see it. I’m older soI have variations on it but yes, men have just been enlightened by all the craziness andI think it will not be so easy putting back the genie in the bottle…

I don’t understand how you think the author is writing from a gynocentric perspective here? It seems pretty clear that he’s advocating for a return to traditional societal structures (albeit updated to fit modern cultural attitudes). So can you please clarify why you think this?

You can take your idea of taxing childfree single men more than other people and throw it on the fire. In many western countries parents receive welfare payments that reduce or offset the tax they pay. Single childfree people don’t qualify for most of these welfare subsidies (apart from unemployment benefits) so already effectively pay more tax than parents. This is effectively coercive reproduction that is insane in the context of over-population, which is one of the causes of global warming. People who choose NOT to breed should be rewarded, not punished.

I love how none of this person’s “solutions” involve restoring individual rights to males.

The current family court and divorce laws allow women to abandon their vows and summarily remove men from their own progeny’s lives while coercing men to continue to uphold their “provider” status with threats of prison.

Step 1 of ending this malaise among men would be to repeal all “child support” and “alimony” laws. No-fault divorce is fine, but women who go this route should accept she does not get to leverage the state to put men into indentured servitude when she leaves.

I guarantee family structure would stabilize within half a decade and in-tact families would be the norm within 9 years.

They are not jailed here either. They lose their drivers license, the have their professional license suspended (If in a trade or licensed occupation)
They are then jailed for the related crimes they commit as unemployable, broke, and heavily in debt ad the arrears add more and more. Oh and he doesn’t get to see his children and if he objects and tries he is jailed.

Alternatively, we could accept that “no fault ” divorce is a failed social experiment and return to the previous model. No proven adultery, no proven cruelty etc. No divorce.

Let the guilty party (male or female) who broke the marriage vows (contract) bear the financial burdens.

This would strengthen marriages as each person would need to be realistic in their expectations of marriage and result in stronger families better able to nurture children.
Current child raising norms are more deplorable than they have been for over a century.

@Anita, why should people who are stuck in loveless (but not overtly abusive) marriages be forced to remain married? Although children are undeniably harmed by divorce, they’re also harmed by living in deeply unhappy households. Also, many couples who divorce don’t have children (or have children who are already independent); what’s the justification for restricting their right to make fundamental choices about their?

Because in my country under the current system, men are made to send large amounts of money to ex-wives, and the man who now shares her bed, for children they never see.
Cited as the major reason for ever increasing male rates of suicide .
Also under the old system it was done in open court and reported in the newspaper so the whole community could see whether justice was done in every case. And children (at least when older,) had the closure of knowing why the magistrate granted the divorce, eg there was a photo of Dad at a brothel ,or three people witnessed Mum going to a motel with her tennis coach.
Bettina Arndt is the national expert on men’s issues, her new book #MenToo, is on Amazon.

You can’t litigate every divorce and keep easy divorce or the courts would be overwhelmed. The intention of easy divorce was to reduce the level of court involvement as much as possible. And who would pay for a trial for every divorce? If the bar to divorce were raised, there would be even fewer marriages since it’s now taken for granted that you won’t finish up with the partner you started out with.

Unless young women were willing to give up sex for pleasure which they enjoy now and revert to the “no ring, no sex” regime of the Fifties, that would probably mean a dramatic rise in the number of single mothers. Again, who would pay to support them?

No matter how much sociologists tinker with human behaviour in search of ideal outcomes, their work will remain subject to the law of unintended consequences. Since at least the 1980s, young men have been treated as a problem for society while attention and privileges have been heaped on young women who have been compensated for disadvantages they never suffered.

Could that kind of incessant discrimination have something to do with the demotivation of young men who have never themselves experienced the male privilege that society so deplores and still does? To listen to the women’s rights crowd, too much is never enough. They’re insatiable.

No, you are niave. Pierre,No fault divorce came first, massive divorce rate came after, when every divorce was decided in full public view, only the desperately unhappy resorted to divorce, not just the temporarily disappointed, which is typically newly married couples without children, their problems by euphemistically “going home to mother” where the wife got to return to dating her husband until the issue is resolved. Including lots of flowers and attention.

In 100% of the cases I have personal knowledge of, it has been the wife who asks for divorce, and usually because she is “unhappy”–not because of something awful he did. Hard to see why they should get alimony but they do.

In some states couples have the option of entering into “covenant marriages” which make divorce more difficult. Perhaps this should be made more widely available, but (in my view) it should remain optional.

Many states have reformed their alimony laws. If spouses have comparable incomes and share custody of the children, neither one is entitled to payments. This follows changes in gender roles (and economic realities) which have see women working outside the home.

@ Susanna Krizo
We are not in the Victorian era, and haven’t been for nearly 118 years!

Besides as a child and young adult, I knew my great grandma and many other women who did remember the Victorian era, and it wasn’t as bad as feminists say.

At the peak of the Victorian age my great great grandma wore trousers as she worked in the family business of horse training (only wearing skirts to church, social events, and when training horses to the side saddle) her husband usually did the laundry, though later her children, boys and girls.

In WW2 as an elderly lady she publicly took to her daughter – in-law with a horse wip, when she discovered she was being unfaithful.

“In WW2 as an elderly lady she publicly took to her daughter – in-law with a horse wip, when she discovered she was being unfaithful.”

What the radfems have forgotten (what silly, spoiled, pampered, insulated, grown up children they are), is that sexual ‘freedom’ mostly harms women. Virtually every social norm or law concerning sex is in fact designed to make sure that every baby can be sure of support from some man and that every man sews his seed in his own field instead of spreading it where he is not responsible for the harvest. It is just that simple.

Women expect more from marriage than men do. How many men see marriage not as an end but the beginning of something that has to be worked at and renewed contantly? I wasn’t surprised when my daughter in her 30s told me she worried about what she would do in ten year time when the last of the children left home for university. She’s not unhappy with her partner and they’re a happy family but she was daunted by the prospect that her future life would be confined to him. It’s said often enough that women dread their husbands retiring and being at home all day. I don’t recall much work being done on how men feel about being stuck with their wives, probably because we’re so obsessed with what women feel about everything.

@Pierre,
If you are so emotionally immature to think that another person is solely responsible for their personal happiness are literally capable of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Therefore in my opinion is too immature to have custody of children, who will be next in line to blame if she’s unhappy.

@AlanAppel
In my country alimony, has been almost non-existant, and marriage is extremely rare.
Child support is hugely abused, any man at any given time can become the father of a baby because the mother named him on the birth certificate. If he’s a working class man, good luck to him proving proving it’s not true because his income is now tied to a child he cannot see, let alone DNA test, whilst he financially supports the real deadbeat dad for 18 years.

In cases of marriage it’s kind of the same, very few married men get to see their children after divorce, apparently a man who ever raised his voice to his wife, restrained her hand from slapping her face, or criticized a financial purchase she made is denied access to his children.
And yet must continue to provide money in child support. Which the woman uses to keep a revolving door of sexual partners into the home she shares with his children, that he’s unworthy to see, whilst feminists applaud the woman.
Men have an ever increasing suicide rate?
My heart bleeds.
In the western world, no woman is forced to marry a man and has never legally been forced to do so, in the modern age, contraception is widely available. I’m a woman and I don’t understand the evil of women.

An anecdote: I was lost, jobless, had a drug habit and couldn’t put down the drink. I sat around playing video games, hanging out with friends at the skatepark skateboarding with no job prospects or will to work even though I am a skilled welder and carpenter. At age 29, I had a son. Since then I have put down the drugs and alcohol, have a career as a welder making great money, no debt, and feel great about myself and love my son very much. He is now 7 years old. Something clicked in my head once I saw my son growning up. Kids are told to wait to have kids, that it isn’t important. It is very important. It is what makes boys men. If we were to put the focus back on family I feel it would solve many if not all of the wests cultural issues.

Thank you Beau, and I hope you continue to be happy and enjoy your son, they grow so quickly !

I think your experiences are also valid for women. In an era not that long ago, a was a married, home owning woman with a newborn in my arms by my 19th birthday.
My life has been filled with purpose and joy. My career ambitions have been to be the best wife and mother I possibly can.
I compare myself to young men and women today and many of them them seem so unhappy. The sexual freedoms they enjoy seem empty, painful and shallow, damaging individuals and social structures.

@Beau Taylor
How refreshing. Great story! Been married 35 years, yeah I’m old, but I agree with you totally. Wives and children do help make a boy a man. I grew up at a time when the pill and no fault divorce saw the destruction of countless families including my own. This is not to say these ‘advances’ were wrong, but we live with the consequences don’t we.

I am glad to see a revival of younger people committing to children and marriages after the disaster of my generation. My oldest daughter after getting a college degree and then married at 28 is now a stay-at-home mother and devoted to her 2 kids and husband – and he to them. It gives me hope.

@Fitzroyalty, I agree the greater tax burden bore by childless men should mean they aren’t targeted for additional taxation. It’s also unworkable, since childless men are often in relationships, and it’s the success of those relationships that determine whether children will be born. Taking money away from a man trying to prove himself to a woman is counter-productive to the goal. That’s a better reason for scraping that idea, because 1) Earth isn’t overpopulated, it can hold many more people than currently exist, 2) global warming is a great thing, our most important contribution to the planet.

@Charlton Blake
Not clear on what civilization can do about climate change that won’t devastate civilization any more than climate change? Are we to turn back the clock on living standards and technical innovations? Or – just kill a bunch of people?

The Earth oscillates in global temperatures from the tropical rain forests in the arctic, to mile high sheets of ice in Ohio – long before coal fired power plants and SUVs. There is no ‘normal’. Are you declaring that right now at this point in history we are at the optimal and we need to stop the temperature oscillations?

If humankind is stopping the return of the next Ice Age through our civilization is that not good? Is a tropical climate better than an Ice Age for humanity? Of course it is.

Craig Williams – The problem with human created climate change as opposed to natural climate change is that human created climate change is speeding things up. The faster the change, the more dangerous to life on earth. Changing the way we do things should help slow down the transition allowing life to adapt.

No it’s just a globalist Marxist plot, those who hate western civilization saw how willing we were to give up our liberties under the real threat of world annilatation in the cold war.
They needed a new horror movie scenario to feed the children in order to continue to destroy western civilization.

@Stephanie
Finally, something I disagree with you on. 1) Earth may not be overpopulated now ON AVERAGE but India Africa and China would certainly be at their limits and as the world gets richer, consumption will inevitably increase which will place even greater strain on resources and our dwindling ecosystems. 2) I would say global warming is a benign thing as it has winners and losers but our contribution has been very minor if anything at all. If several solar physicists are correct BWT, it might not last much longer in the short term anyway.
Otherwise I agree with your sentiment.

The west does not have an overpopulation problem. The west (and Japan) has a declining birth rate problem if anything. Basically all of the increased population that’s projected is coming from Africa and other developing countries. I do agree that taxing single childfree men even more is an idiotic idea though.

“The west does not have an overpopulation problem ” but with a few exceptions, the western world does have an over immigration problem.

In Australia, overpopulation is not caused by birth rates, but by decades of irresponsibly high levels of immigration, Europe and North America also have problems, but in Australia it’s only purpose is to prolong a ponzi scheme.

For Angela and Anita, the real problem of “the west” (meaning developed countries) is their consumption and depletion of “resources” (meaning planet earth) that makes human life possible is out of all proportion to their population.

As Reg types on his computer and/or cell phone, in a climate controlled space on a chair made out of petroleum products, his feet warmly snuggled on the comfy rug etc etc etc. All from the over used “earth resources”.

“So the chivalrous thing to do these days is for men not strive too hard to hold down a job or seek promotion, but stand aside and let women go for it themselves. This is the root of contemporary male economic and educational failure, and the reason why there are increasing numbers of unemployed men even though the total number of jobs remains stable.”

This is patently false.
Affirmative Action and “Diversity Initiatives” openly discriminate against male hires, doubly so if they’re white.

In the most progressive career paths such as Tech women are twice as likely to be hired and promoted given equal qualification, and outsized “hiring quotas” are set despite the propensity of women to shy away from IT related education (at the time of my graduation under 10 years ago, single digits out of several hundred).

There is open sexism going on in the workplace, and the larger and more powerful a corporation is the more heavily it’s practiced, with impunity.

If you look at the detailed statistics Google provides on the composition of their workforce over time, you will see a marked decline in the proportion of their tech employees that are white, or that are male. It’s quite striking.

I think he may be referring to a study on candidates who apply to professors in tech related majors. I believe they found women who twice as likely to be hired for those jobs than men with equal qualifications. I havent seen a study that’s that definitive about other tech jobs, but I have little doubt it’s true for big companies like Google who are killing themselves trying to hire more women and non asian minorities. Funny how no one ever considers asians when talking about workplace diversity. Asian men are vastly more overrepresented in tech jobs than white men.

Well gosh, in order to “stand aside” for women… well, no women work at my company. No woman ever will again. Had some good women over the years, but they all left to have kids or take more corporate jobs. Why bother? I can get a man who’s just as good, and he tends to stick around ’cause I pay great unless you’re looking up to a VP slot at corporate.

So I guess in my own way I’m part of the solution.

Not because I’m civic minded though. I’m not. And I sure don’t owe women a thing. Not one thing. Respond to this post with shaming if you like. Won’t even raise my blood pressure. I’m one of a new kind of man. Shaming doesn’t work on us. Civic pressure doesn’t work on us.

Not in the days of demonizing men. Not in the days of “family” court divorce rape. And #PoundMeToo is just another forum for women to perjure themselves for profit without consequence. I’ll have neither. Bring on the white feathers. New man giggles at ’em.

We’re the guys who still do pretty well, and two of the reasons are we don’t give a fuck about you, and we don’t give a fuck about civic expectations. We keep that quiet, then we deliver better product because at the high end men are better harder workers with higher IQs. Settled science, that.

We keep the world running that the laughable facade of any random woman being “independent” and “strong” might be maintained. We get paid very very well to do so because frankly only perhaps 20% women *can* help, and perhaps only 20% of the capable bother to in the West.

You might not like me… but you might wanna listen to me. I’m the flip side of this author’s coin. And I don’t have a fucking thing for you or society. Society doesn’t deserve it, and neither do you. Now write me another huge check. Or maybe I’ll just retire & let the infrastructure crumble a bit more…

….wait, you thought demonizing & disadvantaging the half of the species that actually gets shit done was gonna be GOOD for the economy? Wow, that’s some magical thinking. Just wow. Oh my.

@Yeah Right
While I can’t refute anything you said (evidence is piling up without mercy), I’m saddened that anyone feels the need to say it. There are so many things that make me afraid for my children and grandchildren that your comment is a symptom of. I’m hoping I can last 6 more years as a teacher before I retire.

You don’t need to maintain me. I get paid very well for what I do too and I’m happy to give back to society. You may want to ease up a bit with the bitterness. Maybe you’ll find what you seek if you do.

@yeah right – the sooner men like you go extinct, the better for the rest. What an embarrassment. Nobody worth anything would speak one percent of your crybaby “Trumpesque” nonsense. The entirety of your post is pathetic and nothing to be proud of. Too bitter for satire. I’m sorry your life has been so disappointing to lead you there

You may not like Yeah Right’s tone but what he says is spot on. I don’t agree with his f*ck you attitude but his comments are EXACTLY what is happening in many places in the Western world. Just because you haven’t been experiencing it doesn’t mean he isn’t on to something. His experience with female workers has been expressed by many business owners, male and female. It’s not as accident that SOME men are speaking up and in not too polite of terms. I’m sure you will be seeing more of it in the future if our society continues down the road it is on. I feel grateful that I was in the construction trades for 40 years and didn’t have to put up with all of this micro aggression / false allegation idiocy that is happening now in the professional businesses. Women don’t work in the construction trades so we didn’t have to deal with any of it. But it and all of the “diversity hiring” is a real experience for many men and the future will not look good it continues. If you put in Bull Sh*t you will get Bull Sh*t in return. So I hope our society likes it because the trend continues.

Very interesting paper. I’ll read the book.
One of the biggest flaw of social sciences when it comes to differences and interactions, is the refusal of many sociologists of acknowledging that the differences between men and women are deeper than a few social constructs that can be corrected with adequate social engineering plus the failure to realize how poor of an explanation binary relations of domination are to explain human life

I often wonder why there are so few women standing up for their husbands, fathers and sons when these radical feminist policies are being discussed and increasingly implemented. They must see their sons are increasingly bailing out, and their daughters are either anxious and depressed or struggling to find suitable partners to start families with. But then I realised the reason they’re so “quiet” is because they’re busy living their lives and trying to support their families. Meanwhile it’s the friendless, childless feminist class who spend all their time on social media that are the loudest voices in this debate. To think we’re radically transforming our societies at every level because of these maladjusted and resentful people – while the sensible majority behind the scenes have to deal with the fallout. Quite frightening.

“Meanwhile it’s the friendless, childless feminist class who spend all their time on social media that are the loudest voices in this debate.”

Michael, you got it very right. Almost all protests are for Leftist causes, and that is in part because Leftists feel a consistent and strong need to fix other people’s problems, but also because Leftists so frequently have few work or family obligations and hence have plenty of free time to parade and protest. You don’t see many STEM students involved in university protests in large part because they have chosen majors where you actually need to spend time studying, and if they study they know they will almost certainly get a good job that some Lefty will want to take a good chunk of their earnings away due to “fairness”. Most of the Antifa protesters have turned out to be living in their mother’s basement due to lack of gainful employment, so a paid (by Soros) job busting people’s heads sounds like a pretty good alternative.

Yup. We know what we see, and what we see is people with nothing better to than bother others. Real women are too busy with real lives. At Christmas dinner with family I was discussing all this with one nephew and five nieces and all but one of the girls were rather angry at the amount of attention given to #metoo and were generally hostile to all the insanity generally. The youngest, in university at present, made a rather embarrassed case for her victimhood but folded quickly.

“Meanwhile it’s the friendless, childless feminist class who spend all their time on social media that are the loudest voices in this debate.”

Quite so, but do you really think that this class has been driving changes in policy and business practices favoring diversity, etc.? Those forces have been unleashed by incremental changes over the last 50 years that encourage liberal progressivism every step of the way. Social media hysterics is one of the more recent symptoms.

Same here in Canada. Follow the money. Ordinary people are now finding it next to impossible to put a roof over their heads here in Vancouver. It’s a place for the Chinese to park their wealth — that they get by selling us almost everything that we buy. Strange that it takes an jerk like Trump to come out and say it.

@Michael
I speak out constantly against feminists and their desire to destroy men’s lives. I fear for the future of my little grandsons, and I’m pained to see my husband stressed in his career in a time of life when he should be shown respect for his experience.

But who listens?

In fifty years I’m yet to meet a single feminist, who thinks that a woman who has been predominantly a homemaker (what ever her experience or education) can have anything to say worth listening to.

I assure you as a mature aged university student, I was outspoken and corespondently unpopular, with anyone under 25.

If the word deindustrialization doesn’t appear in an article about the problems men are having, then what we have read is a stupid article. If it doesn’t mention the decline of labor unions, it is a stupid article. If it doesn’t mention mass incarceration, it is a stupid article. If it doesn’t mention the wages Baby Boomers made in their 20s relative to Millenials, it is a stupid article.

It’s really interesting that the facts over feelings crowd only ever discuss feelings. There are economic factors having nothing to do with feminism that explain much of the problem with men establishing the stability essential to maintaining healthy relationships with society and their families. Of course, that would mean acknowledging that capitalism and ideas around meritocracy actually have very obvious problems.

But since this is a website dedicated to selling libertarian morons the idea they are all geniuses, facts will never matter as they never have with libertarians. It’s philosophical BS all the way down.

Given the rather weird diagnosis presented here – of basically useless men who require undeserved preening, pampering and power in order to avoid being too much of a burden on women – surely the most logical goal should be to get rid of men altogether.

In reality of course, many men contribute much to human civilisation without needing to be propped up by some primitive “patriarchy” and the oppressive power structures that go with it.

The idea that men are basically troublesome apes tacked onto the rest of the species would be applauded by the more simplistic of the radical feminists, but it’s not terribly realistic.

Certainly some men fit that description, and that may well reflect certain aspects of the human gene pool. Improving the gene pool would surely be a more worthy aim than reviving primitive social structures of the kind unjustifiably lauded in this piece.

You do realise those “primitive, oppressive social structures” are responsible for all the technological, scientific and creative wonders that make your life as comfortable and free of danger, disease, poverty and hardship as it has become? I wonder if perhaps a day or two in the year 1795 might give you a clearer idea of what real oppression is. That is to say, oppression by nature, before all those terrible patriarchs freed us from it.

What on Earth are you talking about? The technological, scientific and creative wonders we enjoy are largely the products of the liberal, individualist democracy that the arch-conservative author of this article despises, for the way it has replaced “traditional (medieval) family values” with a more dynamic, creative and rapidly progressing society.

He wants a return to Man the Breadwinner, Lady the Home-maker, and everyone doing as they’re told by the Queen and the Church etc.

“The technological, scientific and creative wonders we enjoy are largely the products of the liberal, individualist democracy”

This is false.
The west is coasting on the inertia of advancements that happened until the early 1950’s, the last of which was the integrated circuit.
Everything else is just secondary effects of those technologies profusing through society.

“liberalization” has brought that advancement to a halt by making all institutions of society subordinate to the dogma of “diversity, inclusion, and women’s liberation”.

This has been quietly observed with great alarm among those paying attention.

The creative men – and women – the people who provide us with new technology, science, art and culture are not “patriarchs” – they are usually liberal individualists. Many don’t even have much in the way of “family life”, because they tend to be focused on their work.

The “patriarchs” are the old-school chattering class, like the author of this essay. They don’t “do”, they just talk, and boss other people around. They are the politicians, the preachers, the bureaucrats, the useless middlemen of the business world, the military buffoons etc etc.

And yes, many of the modish academics too, but they’re of little consequence to anything outside the internet debating ghettos.

I think you’re misunderstanding the article, which is addressing very recent changes in society. No one is looking to return us to medieval times. Most feminists would saw your “liberal, individualist democracy” was a tyrannical patriarchy and remains one for the most part to this day.

Dench was an Anglo-Catholic conservative and as this essay demonstrates, he recoiled in horror from most aspects of the modern world. He also clearly had a lower opinion of men than many radical feminists.

“He wants a return to…everyone doing as they’re told by the Queen and the Church etc.”

How is the modern Left any better in this regard? Compelled speech and social ostracization for saying the “wrong” thing are hardly the qualities of a “liberal, individualist democracy”. The entire point of Quillette is to give a voice to those who would otherwise be banished by the regressive Left’s version of Queen and Church.

Beware authoritarians of any political stripe. But remember there are still many liberals who believe in individual freedom, and who support sexual equality for the purpose of freeing us all from the arbitrary constraints of authoritarian traditions.

@Bubblecar
If I believe the society you describe ever existed, which it did not,

I would prefer to be a “Lady housewife ” beholden to Queen Elizabeth II, and living under the teachings of the Anglican church

Then to survive in a dystopia of intersectionality, controlled by tribal “group think” thugs, who have been over educated in theocracy rather than facts, and, who would, unlike the Queen or Church, stamp out my rights as an individual in a heartbeat.

“I would prefer to be a “Lady housewife ” beholden to Queen Elizabeth II, and living under the teachings of the Anglican church”

Bully for you. But you right-wing authoritarians kid yourselves that your opposition to left-wing authoritarians gives you some kind of “true liberal” credibility. It doesn’t – you are even more anti-individual and anti-freedom than the dogmatic lefties.

“The technological, scientific and creative wonders we enjoy are largely the products of the liberal, individualist democracy…”

OK, but what is the foundation of that liberal individualism? It is certainly a modern development, so how did it arise? Whatever the benefits of liberalism, no society can succeed by individualism and the progressive mindset alone. Yet it is just such thinking that liberals like yourself project, in a way that suggests you believe that these ideas should supplant all others that have gone before. For the good of humanity, of course. If you could obliterate the influence and memory of our past, you would. So long, patriarchy. But like a diamond borne in darkness under pressure, liberalism is a product of something much greater than itself.

“…the way it has replaced “traditional (medieval) family values” with a more dynamic, creative and rapidly progressing society.”

Progress is not good enough– it must be creative, dynamic and rapid! When liberalism, as we have known it for the last c. 50 years, becomes the new tradition, whereto from there? It is this inherently restless spirit of liberalism that is harmful wherever it erodes or destroys alternative pathways, which it does by its very nature. The West has benefitted greatly from the Age of Enlightenment, but the ancient rebellious character of the latter requires the grounding of tradition in order to avoid the tendency of venerating radical innovation for its own sake, among other perils.

“Individualism and statism grow together. Deneen points out that liberals end up creating something like the picture of society that Hobbes sketched out in the 1600s: the Leviathan state and a multitude of atomised individuals.”

“The West has benefited greatly from the Age of Enlightenment, but the ancient rebellious character of the latter requires the grounding of tradition in order to avoid the tendency of venerating radical innovation for its own sake, among other perils.” Excellent point, Augustine! People who uncritically celebrate the “rights revolution” of the late 20th/early 21st century often ignore the harms which have accompanied the accomplishments of social movements.

Augustine: you are free to be as traditional, conservative, superstitious and lazy-minded as you like. But don’t expect those who actually contribute to human progress to follow your example, and certainly don’t expect us to be compelled to follow your example by the kind of state intervention, and discouragement of individual liberty, favoured by Dench and the right-wing posters here.

Bubblecar: you are free to be as progressive, liberal, utopian and hyperactive as you like. But don’t expect those who actually contribute to human progress to follow your example, and certainly don’t expect us to be compelled to follow your example by the kind of state intervention…

Whoops, lost it right there. I never said anything in favor of state intervention or about discouragement of individual liberty. You may be getting your right wing stereotypes confused. You do realize that structure and order– which will necessarily compromise individual freedoms– can exist successfully in society outside of government, right?

What makes you think I’m conservative ?
I didn’t leave the left the left left me, as it did many others. They want to destroy everything I value, including the country I love.

After voting for labor most of my adult life, I’ve seen them throw workers under the bus in favour of, student activists, Chinese donors, foreigners (who our last census indicates may now be almost half the population), crazed environmentalists (who no longer care about the environment, only communism and globalist conspiracies ) , supporting whoever is currently at the top of the oppression Olympics, whilst pushing strange gender theories on our pre-schoolers. Their latest plan is to steal retirement savings and penalise home buyers.

The conservatives are no better and both sides change Prime Ministers ,more often than than an elderly person can afford to use an electric power point.

The reason I would prefer Queen and Church, is that I would know Exactly what I was signing up for, today?????

No, the creative _MEN._
Women are 4% of primary patent filers.
Women do little or no real engineering in the West.
Many of the women that “are engineers” are *environmental* engineers who do little beyond check compliance.

Women basically do no inventing, no engineering, run little in the way of logistics, build nothing, design nothing, maintain nothing, and manufacture nothing except as minor employees.. at least in the West.

More power to the minority of exceptions… but they are a MINORITY of EXCEPTIONS… at least in the West.

Name a company that *makes useful shit* founded by a woman.
Not *consumer goods* unless they make them at great scale & efficiency.
Okay great, name 10 more.
“Yeah, right,” said Yeah Right.

Now name a great female scientist… not named Curie.
There are a few… but I bet *you* can’t name them without Googling.

Name a female artist on the level of Michelangelo. Or DaVinci. Or Picasso.
You can’t because there are none.
Frieda Kahlo? Bad joke.

Who gave birth to you? A man?
Who educated you? Men or women?
Who took care of you when you were ill?
Who encouraged you when you drew stick figures as a child? I bet it was your mother (and you aren’t a frigging Van Gogh either, so what’s your point?)
Who will take care of you when get older? Women.
So for all of your moaning and claims how men are so fucking superior because they’ve had the time to do things women never did until our era, you owe your life to women and I bet you anything it’s what really grates you. Womb envy is a real thing.

The funny thing here in this seemingly confrontation between Krizo and Yeah R.: they agree for 100% on the issue, Krizo mentions that procreation, education and caring is important and a female thing, Yeah comes with all those technical, engineering, science and art performance and results, and Krizo let it go. The really important thing here is of course: is the first category of human behaviour or knwoledge or talent superior to the other one? That’s where you should quarrel about. Both categories are needed, have to be done, and need human culture, affinity or talent. I think, yes, it’s all about the great question of SUPERIORITY yes or no, and that’s also the reason that, all the time,feminists or activists push women into the labour floor, the salaried jobs, the career, this has to be 100% equal if not :SUPPRESSION. In any bank or company, 50% female managers, 50% men. It’s too ridiculous, all this, for an old man as I am now, to see how things develop and change, and sink.

And for all your complaints (collectively) how men do the dangerous and dirty work, a woman is never closer to death than when she gives birth and caring for children is a messy business. So all you can prove is that life is dangerous and messy and we’re all in it, whether we like it or not.

Well said Susanna,
In the middle ages it was said a man fought for his life on the battlefield, and women fought for their lives in the child bed , fresh straw? (my best translation of the medieval words)
Since you like the Victorian era you must know that by the 1840s, the very wealthy, at least, had access to safe, pain-free childbirth, perfected by men.
In the Crimean War it took a woman,Francis Nightingale to consider the needs of men, fallen in battle.
So far pretty equal.

I’m not young but I was born equal, before the law, with equal voting rights and the right to equal pay for equal work.

In early feminism, the goal of many feminists, was merely to raise the social concept as women as mothers and homemakers and to acknowledge the contribution they made to society in general. To raise their work to the exalted level of the Victorian women in literature.

My mother hated housework, though enjoyed drinking gin and playing polka with other housewives. Preferred dragging us to work to lie in a pram, all alone, except whilst being breastfed, of course. And then at night again alone in prams, at naked hippy parties where any random, drunken lactating woman might pick you up and feed you. It’s the 70’s feminism, nakedness, group sex all part of an evil lobby. (ironicly, my daughters now tell me women topless sunbathing can now be charged with pedophilalia! lol)
I know this because I was the eldest and witnessed
how my younger siblings were treated in their infancy.
I thank Christ (though I’m barely a Christian) the orphanage /daycare was not yet invented and I was largely raised by my grandmother’s who nurtured me, cared for me and loved me. This is true feminism. The love of children. And the patience to raise them.
But whilst I was happy, my mother and her feminist coven were reading St Greer, their interpretation, girls should be put on the pill at the point of menstruation, and immediately introduced to sex ,whilst the mother instructed the boy how to provide the daughter a perfect orgasm.
Fortunately, being a latch door kid, from the age of seven, meant school was always optional, and since I was always a straight “A” student, nobody cared anyway.
At home, watching daytime TV, St Greer, said “little girls, next time a man tells you ,”if you really love me you’d have sex with me, tell him if you really love me you would buy me an engagement ring ”
Her words are imprinted in my brain,
Like a bat out of hell I was out of home and married.

And perhaps that’s why, outside of Academia ,less than ten percent of women identify as feminists in my country and many other western countries.

And you seem so very blissfully ignorant of the fact that women were barred from higher education until the 20th century and that no one wrote much of anything until the Reformation and you also assume that we have everything humanity has ever created, which is such a naive conclusion. Your whole premise rests on history’s very selective choices what to save and what not to save for prosperity.

@Susanna before that time also by far the most men were barred from higher education. Even today, when the opportunities have been equal for 50 years differences in innovation are quite staggering. Wikipedia is maintained for 90% by men, open source is even more segregated. Both examples are completely open to anybody and it is hard to see how racism or sexism could be used explain those differences.

@Yeah is way over the top and seems to lack to grace that we’re in it together and that what women may lack in innovative skills is more than made up with their feminine powers as you rightly pointed out. The only defense for @Yeah I see is that I do als recognize the frustration when I read more and more how women invented computing, won the war, and the real genius behind Einstein was his wife.

Peter Kriens. I think the problem with Yeah Right is that he is tired of hearing all of the men are horrible useless bums and the future is female narrative. I get pissy from the constant barrage of it too. Yes, everyone is needed in our society, however when one sex is considered the “best thing since sliced bread” and the other sex is considered “useless and failing in all categories” it gets very old, very fast. I, personally, like it when someone gets passionate about how things are going South. I like it when Jordan Peterson takes an interviewer to task for asking the same stupid ideology based questions for the umpteenth time like a parrot reciting a text. So I would be prepared to give Yeah Right more slack than the leftist ideologue women who respond in these columns.

Bubblecar – Your reference to “some primitive ‘patriarchy’ and the oppressive power structures that go with it”. Please provide examples of some wonderful alternatives to the “primitive patriarchy” that have had any modicum of success and cultural development over the last 5000 years. I know of none. For all of the bad mouthing of “the patriarchy” that we are hearing, there has been ZERO proven alternatives and any alternatives that can be remembered were limited to Stone Age technology and little to no cultural development. Could it be that this “patriarchy” that everyone is railing against isn’t quite as bad as everyone is claiming?

Nothing new here. Just the usual masculinity hatred. As usual, men as a group (who still pay more in taxes than they derive in benefits, as opposed to women who still do just the opposite) are asked to subsidize women. This time by making young men change diapers for young career women. Where did the author think all of this tax money comes from? It comes fom men and masculinity, that’s where.

Is this some kind of joke? The problem is not masculinity. Men have bailed out of marriage because there’s nothing in it for them. Life has gotten much easier, and in response the West has changed a highly asymmetrical but fair contract adapted to pre-industrial brutality into one where women have all of the choices, and men still have exactly the same responsibilities as 1000 years ago. It’s simply not a fair contract anymore. It makes no sense. It cannot work. Only an idiot would sign such a contract.

Marriage is fundamentally about reproduction. Until men get reproductive rights, or young women leave the workplace and admit that they can’t have it all, nothing is going to change. Crippling the workplace in order to further subsidize women is, of course, the other favorite plan of the masculinity haters.

It’s not rocket science, but the answer is so repellent to the intellectual class, whose livelihoods can be destroyed at will by feminists, that they will never admit it.

I predict this disastrous status quo will continue until either migration replaces the extant population with traditionalists who take over and re-institute “patriarchy”, or the military and economic status of these nations weakens to the point they are annexed by their neighbors.

Meta-studies on history going back thousands of years show ‘women’s liberation’ type policies are never reversed without fundamental destruction of the society in question. The only question remaining is whether that outcome will be via steady decline or something nastier.

I agree, however Mary Wolstencroft (I hope I got her name right there’s no edit lol) wrote in the 18C of a feminist ideal I respect, she berated women for caring more about their horses and dogs and gossiping with other women,
When their concerns should have been for their children, servants and husbands.
She advised a woman to care for her children, to educate herself so she could properly oversee her children’s education and be intellectually equal to her husband, and to be interested in her servants as they were financially dependant on her and whose justice was within her domain.

By the 19th century these ideals became the norm, and women were culturally worshiped in the western world because their virtues were improving the world.
And in my country by this point they were not only equal but above men.
And then the feminists worshiped mass immigration and now complain men look at them and worse, sadly.
Today the feminists want to destroy everything.

It is difficult to find “compilations” of these things, but you can see the history play out over and over again.

For instance, Ancient Rome:

~5 century BC: Roman civilization is a a strong patriarchy, fathers are liable for the actions of their wife and children, and have absolute authority over the family (including the power of life and death)

~1 century BC: Roman civilization blossoms into the most powerful and advanced civilization in the world. Material wealth is astounding, citizens (i.e.: non slaves) do not need to work. They have running water, baths and import spices from thousands of miles away. The Romans enjoy the arts and philosophy; they know and appreciate democracy, commerce, science, human rights, animal rights, children rights and women become emancipated. No-fault divorce is enacted, and quickly becomes popular by the end of the century.

~1-2 century AD: The family unit is destroyed. Men refuse to marry and the government tries to revive marriage with a “bachelor tax”, to no avail. Children are growing up without fathers, Roman women show little interest in raising their own children and frequently use nannies. The wealth and power of women grows very fast, while men become increasingly demotivated and engage in prostitution and vice. Prostitution and homosexuality become widespread.

~3-4 century AD: A moral and demographic collapse takes place, Roman population declines due to below-replacement birth-rate. Vice and massive corruption are rampant, while the new-born Catholic Religion is gaining power (it becomes the religion of the Empire in 380 AD). There is extreme economic, political and military instability: there are 25 successive emperors in half a century (many end up assassinated), the Empire is ungovernable and on the brink of civil war.

~5 century AD: The Empire is ruled by an elite of military men that use the Emperor as a puppet; due to massive debts and financial problems, the Empire cannot afford to hire foreign mercenaries to defend itself (Roman citizens have long ago being replaced by mercenaries in the army), and starts “selling” parts of the Empire in exchange for protection. Eventually, the mercenaries figure out that the “Emperor has no clothes”, and overrun and pillage the Empire.

@A W
You forgot that the economic migrants, called barbarians because they didn’t speak latin were already living living in Rome..
We are living in the perfect storm of civilization collapse, the end is near my friend, and it’s not global warming.

I recently told my wife that my primary motivation for getting my life together and finally deciding on a real career was knowing she and our unexpected baby needed me. I’d never felt truly needed before. I suspect that I’m not alone among men in saying my primary motivation to continue going to work is my wife and kids.

This is exactly what makes the world go round – men taking responsibility for their families don’t break laws, work hard, and earn more so their families survive and thrive. Take that motivation away and all but the cognitive and economic elite will slack off and play video games until their parent’s kick them out.

Bob, I agree whole heartedly. And if you find a woman that appreciates that relationship and takes care of your needs as you desire to take care of hers it works out.
How about the wife who ransoms your needs, rather than fulfilling them. Then after watching idiotic Media and listening to disingenuous female friends, decides to go “find herself”. Being tempted away by the ridiculous external temptations because she fell out of the (superficial) love that she had because it doesn’t conform to what modern culture tells her it is suppose to be.
You try to explain, but after all you are just one of them idiot men that just want her for sex.

I have 2 friends accused of *molesting their own children* in family court. The woman was not prosecuted for obvious perjury (both later brought the kids back to live with the man in his house!) in either case.

Think on that @dellingdog. There are SO many Tome’s out there. I am SO grateful I saw them young.

What’s worse is that men, who are forced to financially support the children being raped by man in the mothers bed, but he can’t see his children ,let alone protect them, because sometimes when he was angry he yelled at her.

The legal system is set up to perpetuate exactly what Tome708 described. 80% of divorces filed by women? Wonder why? 80% of sole custody of children going to women. Wonder why? Oh it must be those horrible men. They are such “commitmentphobes”. The REAL commitmentphobes are the women who get married and then decide that it is too much trouble being married to the men they chose and would rather take everything they can get their hands on and any future funds that might be available to them (whether or not the “agreement” is realistic) and find someone else to shack up with while living on the gravy train. Tome708 might possibly have a good reason for being a little upset.

Much of this will correct itself. Women can’t do it all, it is physically impossible, and the women they have employed at low cost to do the menial labor are getting the opportunity to replace them at lower cost. It would be rational for women to marry a lower status man willing to run the household but those pairings don’t succeed and rarely happen. The hard reality of the scandinavian experiment will sink in as a direct challenge to the dogma.

I don’t think women want what they have been sold. A well paying job is all consuming. Men have known this all their lives. If you want to be able to leave your job for a year to have a kid you cannot be indispensible. Your only option then is too be a cog in a machine. That will be the next wave of discontent. It isn’t men who are the problem.

I’m already seeing subtle shifts. Female dominated firms are hiring men because they need someone around who is willing to put in the hours.

The men who are checking out are simply not hungry enough. Taking on the burden of responsibility is never fun. Or even satisfying. It is only necessary because of the alternative, which is destructive and antisocial behaviour which characterizes young men with no anchor.

@Derek, “It would be rational for women to marry a lower status man willing to run the household but those pairings don’t succeed and rarely happen.”

Yikes, I hope not! I just married a man of significantly lower status (I’m a geologist doing a PhD, he’s a labourer with a high school diploma). He makes much more than me now, but that will likely change in a few years. I employed the same logic you refer to when I was ready to choose a husband. I wanted someone willing and easily able to move to different cities with me every few years, and open to taking time out of the workforce to raise kids.

It is also very hard as an educated woman to find a man as educated as you or more, who’s also not a leftist soyboy or an international student from a country you’d never want to live in. I agree the pairing is rare, but I think the refusal of women to consider “lower status” men means many of these women will be single forever and miss their reproductive window. I think more women should go my route, but I guess time will tell.

Women will always settle for equal. I know I may sound very conservative, but after years of pondering, I think the sexual revolution had a lot to answer for, no longer do the young “heavy pet ” at the drive in and dream of their wedding day.

It’s not until the the teen-age shop assistant and the teen-age mechanical apprentice, feel the need of at least a formal Engagement, before sex, and feminists were off somewhere academia, will we have a healthy society again.

Yes Stephanie, with more women doing post secondary ed than men and more doing better at it, inevitably more of these women will have to marry (educationally) down men. However this doesn’t preclude the two-career family. And to the women of this group who say “I’m not raising my daughters to lead a domestic life!” I’d say what you’ll be doing then is employing(educationally) down women for doing domestic chores and child rearing duty on your behalf. And isn’t that just what elites in human society have always done?

What I know, men don’t mind a girl dummer or less smart or intelligent than they are(in fact it mostly even is a positive trait for them, makes it easier to play the masculine role), but, unless I’m wrong here, the opposite is not acceptable, and easily leads to divorce (again initiated, by whom else, the woman again, though, she might have told, at first, all her family and friends that the difference doesn’t mind, cus, she is a modern woman, a 21st century one,and fully emancipated).
Detail: the reason of this divorce in the end, also here, is not, openly said, that intelligence, but something else, some feeling or unsatisfied thing.

I wonder if a redefinition of status is called for. It sounds as if your husband is a competent, well paid, flexible, man who is perhaps good to look at and respected by his peers.
Does his lack of a uni degree matter quite so much. I have met men and women with uni degrees who seem to me to have little of worth to offer the world.
In a few years time when a small child or two would make it extremely difficult for you to make extended field trips he sounds like just the bloke you want.

No, the fact that the women are becoming more feminine and making more people oriented career choices that usually pay less and the men are becoming more masculine and making more things oriented career choices that usually pay more.
And then there is the stupid feminist government that is allowing way too many immigrants into the country which is destabilizing the society and increasing the crime rate significantly.

Yes, Susanna, when women are equal and free from filthy feminist dogmatism, they are free to work as middle class women have always done, Teaching, Nursing and the Arts. Funny happened for centuries under the feminist myth of an evil patrimony ?

But feminists never cared about the working class, who inherited their filth, the women who have to leave their kids in a filthy bedsit, because middle class women told them they had to do the night shift as a waitress at Mc Donald’s because if they lose their jobs and the man they are working to support, because that’s what the feminist God’s tell them?
Feminism is the most evil theology, except Islam, and since they unite, I know their real ambition is the annilation of the wholesome western man.
Who should be validated for his incredible advances for the world.

“you want to be able to leave your job for a year to have a kid you cannot be indispensible.“.
But if the government makes you “indispensable” by requiring the company allow this and severely punishing a company that doesn’t, it artificially prevents the consequence as you describe

Why should a man take on the burden of additional responsiblity?
In past, being a salaryman or breadwinner was a guaranteed method to attract a desirable (comparatively attractive) woman for the majority of men, and if not that then it atleast guaranteed the man a modicum of respect, authority and stability in their lives. Nowadays it’s not guaranteed, and not only that, but often times it is sneered at and deemed bad/evil/stupid and penalized.

Willingness to be loyal to company and to work 60+ hours a week to provide for family is no longer admired, instead it’s looked upon as some manifestation of ‘toxic masculinity’ that needs to be curbed out of existence so stronk independent wahmyn can have equal careers and then also be able pop off to start a family and take care of kids or take off a day for menstrual pains.

Why would a man have a life-consuming career unless he needed the money? The only reason he would ever need that much money is either to feed his family or to signal to women than he is a desirable partner because he’s willing to work like a mule to provide, now that no longer is viewed as such signal why bother?

Interesting, so Eleanor Rathbone made sure that the husband were bypassed, and child allowances were paid out directly to the mother. In Kenya, where I worked, I noticed an opposite case, in the British tea plantations of the highlands.Tea was picked by women (never by men, women are better in repetitive and secure manual work, every individual twig has to be correct, not too young, and not to long/old), but the management paid the weekly pay-outs (depending on the kilos picked) cash in an envelope to the husbands , for being “head of family” (no bank accounts themn and probably not even now). This pay-out day was often hilarious, women came with some other befriended women (and, if possible, rather sturdy ones), and made sure where and when the husband left the factory hall (sometimes, he left at the back, to no avail, also this door was kept an eye on by the women), after being paid. The group fell on the man,struggled, until they managed to get hold of the envelope. Other men there, as well as women and children, laughed when the poor man lost the money to his wife, that had earned all money on herself. Of course, mothers make sure the money is well spent in the family. In my youth, men from workers class got the envelope with their weekly salary (earned by themselves, often with heavy and dirty work) and gave it to their wives, who divided it over the different family needs, including a small allowance to him for a beer with his friends in the bar. Quite a difference, I realise now, long after these things were happening. No idea how things are now.

This was how it was in my household, in the 60’s/70’s. My father worked and handed over his paycheck to my mother, who gave him an “allowance.” Note that this continued even after my father was diagnosed with cancer. At this juncture, my mother had to stop lying around in bed reading books to nurse him so he could continue working until he couldn’t work anymore. And, despite her college education (his was merely vocational) his work — particularly had he survived — was destined to be vital (technologically-advancing medical equipment) while she was perfectly content to work as a law librarian, followed by indexing. For this kind of work, I’m sure she wouldn’t have traded her four children and those halcyon years of smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with friends, making clothes, curtains, and other creative endeavors, while he was shoveling the car out of the snow to make the drive to work.

So the women take the check and yes, they budget it, but they are surviving off the sweat of men. The shift to consuming the workplace (and making it “unsafe” for men) has merely added work to the work they aren’t likely to give up — rearing children — except for the fact that by all appearances, they aren’t able to do it all. The psychological damage and emerging epidemic of “special needs” makes for a terrible legacy, for dismantling the patriarchy.

And what are childless women doing with this wondrous freedom from the shackles of domesticity? They are the worst actors in my Facebook feed, seeking out the employers of heretics to get them fired, posting botched attempts to connect with men online (he’s always the one who’s wrong or “creepy”) unfriending heretics, castigating, torturing people with their ideas of moral purity. If this is a morally superior means of spending one’s time than creating a pleasant home life for a group of related persons, well…I’d be hard-pressed to believe it. They seem hell-bent on spreading their misery, while defending their right to it, all the same.

“libertarian assault on sex roles” – How exactly does a libertarian create an assault on sex roles when the idea instead suggest you are free to have whatever roles you like?
It is precisely the opposite, in which the state coerces all to provide for others, to provide solutions, to provide jobs, to provide schools and health care, that has caused the descent of natural human motivations. The more you attempt to fix humanity, the more broken it will become, because the reality is humanity is far to variable to suggest men do one thing and women do another.
Choice, not social pressure or social contracts, drives solutions: necessity is the mother of invention.
Making anybody unnecessary because the state is there to fix it all destroys innovation, motivation, opportunity, interests and abilities.

The author (RIP) does a decent job of diagnosing the problems created by changing gender roles and the shift towards preferential treatment of women, but apparently could not fully escape his Leftist sociology perspective in suggesting solutions that don’t involve more government intrusion into society, which is ironic since government intrusions are the responsible for most of the problems he addresses in the essay. Take away the welfare state, enforce borders to keep out masses of unskilled labor, and enforce strict equal rights (e.g. color and gender blind) in matters of court justice (i.e. divorce and child rights), employment and school admissions (i.e. no affirmative action or quotas), and 98% of the problems associated with male disconnection with society and single motherhood would disappear almost overnight.

If governments pay men not to work, and women to have children without marriage, the nation will will get more of it. If you tax work, savings, and marriage less, you will get more of it. Simple economics which most sociologists choose to ignore.

I couldn’t help but thinking throughout reading the article, that in Australia, at least, all of these problems were created by two single pieces of legislation introduced in circa 1975 by Prime Minister Whitlam.

They were “no fault ” divorce and welfare payments for unmarried mothers. (later described as single parents)

May the author RIP, but I found the ideas in this article inconsistent at best and ludicrous at worst. First we hear lack of jobs isn’t the issue, then we hear about state jobs programs as a solution. Nowhere do we hear about decreased church attendance as a factor in the decline of family cohesion. And then this beauty:

“Single people, in particular single childless men, should be taxed at a higher rate because they are less likely to be engaged in the reciprocal support activities of the moral economy which limit the collective liabilities of the welfare state.”

But, Benita, it all depends whether you focus on the small (family, individual) or the large (world population, food problems, nature reserves). What’s good for the first, is bad for the second, and reverse. Last time I read a report of somebody, calculating the costs of an extra child (in the Western world) in extra environmental damage and CO2 pollution, and he is right there of course. But how would a pregnant woman look at these things? I fear, diametrically opposed.

@dirk
In my country at least, the same people who pour vitriol on the carbon footprint of an expectant mother, ( despite two generations of falling birth rates) are the same people who rally for open boarders and mass immigration from the third world, regardless of their carbon footprint.

Whilst I oppose mass immigration, I believe climate change is a conspiracy theory, filling the vacuum in a society losing its religion.

Carbon dioxide is a result of temperature increase, not the cause. Plants need carbon dioxide, and I welcome a greener world with ever increasing food production . Historically, it was warmer 1000 years ago than today, between circa 1400-1800 AD there was a mini ice age. Since then the world is moving towards a correction to its “normal” climate.

The only human danger is that of delusional climate change worshippers, carrying out their deranged dreams of destroying the western world, socially ,economically and policaly, in an insane plot to strip the wealth and industry of the west and redistribute it to the third world.

That’s funny Anita, yesterday I had a family dinner and had a discussion with someone who spoke similar words like you, climate change is of all times, CO2 pollution is a hoax, nature will care for itself. In my small circle of friends, nobody would speak so, because we all have worked with CO2 trials in crops, and , so, know about the positive and negative properties of atmospheric CO2, and their influence on climate and ecological meaning. However, I agree that knowledge of all this should not, again, lead to massive distribution of cash to thirld world nations, e.g. Turkey all of a sudden came to to the conclusion to belong to the 3rd world in Katowice, yes, very easy, when it suits you , to belong to the backward nations. China is another case, good for 15 gigaton of CO2 yearly to the atmosphere, they didn’t even come to Katowice (as neither did the US).

And she also was against immigrants and open borders. This seems to be a syndrome: anti-open borders-climate change deniers. I,m perplexed about this connection. Some of them I understand, like the one: feminism-leftish. But this one???

“Single people, in particular single childless women, should be taxed at a higher rate because they are less likely to be engaged in the reciprocal support activities of the moral economy which limit the collective liabilities of the welfare state.”

He obviously has forgotten (or intentionally overlooked) the fact that single people and childless couples are already being effectively taxed at a higher rate because they can’t take the child tax credit on their 1060.

I couldn’t agree more with your last comment. I was incredulous when I read that we need to tax single men more. What about single women? No mention. The unapologetic sexism just keeps coming and coming. And people wonder why MGTOW is becoming a “growth” lifestyle. I would probably be MGTOW myself if I hadn’t married a great Japanese woman way before I was ever “Red Pilled”. No regrets.

>outsources/offshores as many jobs as possible, while also forcing women into the workplace
>imports massive numbers of foreigners
>gives women and foreigners preference in everything

“Why are these men such losers? Better tax them to death even further to pay for the net drain women and foreigners while pretending we live in anything resembling a meritocracy. Can’t restore anything resembling that.”

Good show, old chap. Can’t wait for this all to collapse so we or the next generation can get our revenge on these types in the ensuing anarchy and chaos. It’s already reached the breaking point where young people working full time can’t even afford to form families. Can’t be long now.

@Freidrich, I agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t think lack of money is why people aren’t having kids. The people I know with kids were the poorest before the kids, it’s wealthy people who will say over cocktails at nice restaurants that they can’t afford them. I live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, make less than minimum wage, and my husband is a labourer, but we can afford to have kids. It just requires sacrifice, which young people today have little stomach for.

@Stephanie, after 25 years in financial planning, working with families of all varieties, I found that poor people are more likely to have children. Usually at a much younger age. The driver was invariably the woman as she “wanted a baby”. These days I see more single women having chn via Govt subsidised programs involving fertilisation by anything other than the traditional method. It’s almost a status symbol for them. And they all know how much Govt welfare they will get. Once on the motherhood and child rearing road, they often have 2 or 3 chn in order to get a bigger Govt supplied house. Mostly with different fathers or sperm donors who have nothing to do with their kids except financial support – when forced to by the state. Wealthier and more highly educated people, take financial costs and lifestyle choices into consideration when planning chn.
The desire to better oneself in financial and asset terms, is, as you say, something that requires sacrifice and delayed gratification. Neither of these attributes seem to be instilled into either the poorer or the wealthier ones. They must have everything now. So, wealthier people have less chn and work more to “get ahead” and the poorer ones demand the Govt do “something” to “help” them as they get left behind. The “something” invariably is the wealth redistribution factor so loved by left leaning Governments.
In my country, 48% of families of any sort do not pay net tax! A single mother with 2 chn can earn up to $57,000pa with out paying any net tax. Median income is $65,000 pa. They also get Govt assistance in housing, child care, preferential work selection and so on. Who needs men?

My experience is that whereas welfare class people have kids — because the government will look after them — working class couples can’t begin to afford it, they can barely afford to keep a roof over their own heads. My married nieces and nephews are unanimous about this.

If you want to live on the dole in dangerous third worldized places in what used to be your country that are also a horrible environment for rearing children, you can go that route. If you’re actually a responsible person who works then you can’t afford it, unless you’re rich. Peter Hitchens talked about this, about how only the very rich and very poor can even afford to have families in Britain, and it’s true elsewhere too since the same failed economic and other policies exist in other places as well.

The complaints about men’s sense of dislocation are familiar, but what the author seems to miss, is that the blurring of traditional sex roles was accomplished not by feminists, but modernity and industrialization.

When a machine provides more muscle power than a hundred men, when “work” increasingly consists of sitting down and typing things, it doesn’t take a Gloria Steinem to grasp that the worker can be either sex. Feminism was only an acknowledgement of this fact.

“And why do you need patriarchy to teach you how to be a good man? If you’re a good man, you will do what is good naturally.”

Have you forgotten that there is no such thing as nature when it comes to gender? We are blank slates, socially constructed to be men (should that be the gender we select), or women if that’s our choice, or … whatever else we may prefer.

Seriously now: No, men do not do what is good naturally. Naturally men are rather dangerous savages. The first task of any society is taming men. It used to be the job of mothers who understood these things to civilize their sons. All cultures are, or used to be, passed on by mothers. What a sad thing it is that it is females — or at least the radfems — who no longer understand that it is women who designed The Patriarchy for their own protection. If you want to see Patriarchy in action, check out the survival statistics for the Titanic:

Well Susanna, the common man didn’t have the vote until the people using them as cannon fodder in their wars decided they should. What obligations did women get as a stipulation to their vote?

And of course this all assumes “the vote” aka universal suffrage democracy is even a good system, which it’s not. You now have monopoly big media complaining about “Russian bots” “fake news” and other nonsense because even it’s they who shill hardest for universal suffrage democracy. In other words, they don’t believe that people can actually make up their own minds, given information; They just want to be the sole disseminator of information to the masses, in order to move voting patterns in the direction of the media owner’s and their group’s interests.

If you don’t like voting, you don’t have to participate. Women already had negative rights gained from the witch hunts (they were responsible for their actions before law, without the positive rights of representation). What they gained from the vote was representation and the ability to change laws that affected them and their children. Before gaining the vote, it took them decades to change laws that affected them and their children (such as child labor laws). You may take voting for granted, but people in countries without a voting system that is free of coercion don’t. And neither did women who lived in the era before 1920.

You do know that in patriarchal times women were needed to provide as many offspring as possible, hence they were exempt from war and the whole “Women and Children First” came from that mentality. Majority of Roman women died before age 25 during childbirth, hence there was a need to preserve as many girls as possible, although Romans exposed more female infants than male infants, because boys were preferred (which is also why 200 million girls are missing right now in China and India due to selective abortion and infanticide). The whole concept was based on the idea that a man could have a hundred children a year, a woman only one. But now that we have moved away from scarcity into the world of plenty, why do we keep on holding on to such thoughts? It makes no sense, and such thoughts have been largely abandoned. And you really can’t have it both ways. You can’t say women created patriarchy to protect themselves, that patriarchy is a figment of feminist imagination while claiming oppressive patriarchy that denigrates women is a reality. You need to choose one of the three.

And again you resort to stereotypes (which is so trite in every way). Men aren’t more savage than women. We’re all human, for better and worse. I so wish you would actually do some real studying instead of trafficking in stereotypes and worn out anecdotes. Because really, if men were such savages, a matriarchy would be the preferred mode of existence, keeping all men firmly under women’s rule all their life. But who supports such a thought? Not I.

@Ray Andrews
I agree.
Before post modernists adopted it , the term literally meant protecting and providing for women and children, whilst the matriarch nurtured children, grandchildren and the elderly, and helping her husband, socially, domesticly or in family business, according to her husbands station in life.

The system has been successful for thousands of years, perhaps that’s why post modernists hate it?

@Susanna Krizo
I don’t know why men in the US tried to prevent women from voting, as you claim, in my country women and men have always had equal voting rights under federal law. And yet still “Patriarchy is evil, blah blah…. ” is taught at our universities, so your argument doesn’t stand up.

As for witchcraft trials, your argument is irrelevant, as Neither men or women had representation at that time.
You also overlook the men accused of witchcraft, and that most of the accusations were made by women.
Why would women want to kill other women, is a move relevant, and far more interesting question?

No, I DO have to vote. The farce we call “Democracy” is the loaded gun in the room. By it, resentful types like yourself who constantly bemoan “not enough women in X high position” (while never looking down to the dirty shitwork, of course), greedy foreigners looking for a piece of the pie they didn’t bake or earn, and venal elites looking to enrich themselves and empower themselves at my expense may subject me and those like me to intolerable living conditions.

“Patriarchy was largely shaped by women to get men to serve their interests.” Women designed a system in which they were treated as property and lacked basic rights? In order to be happy? We must be defining “patriarchy” in very different ways.

“Women designed a system in which they were treated as property and lacked basic rights? In order to be happy?”

Until recently ‘happiness’ was so rare as to be irrelevant. Survival was what mattered. And please remember that until a couple of centuries ago almost everyone was, effectively, property and lacked basic human rights. There is much not to like in history, and the overall treatment of women was certainly part of it, but things should be kept in perspective.

This is a new favorite among supporters of patriarchy. They say women created it, absolving men, while they say feminists created “The Patriarchy.” In other words, “real” women created patriarchy to protect themselves and feminists are neurotic women who don’t understand how great women had it under patriarchy. And some women and men actually believe this bullshit. If women created patriarchy, why in the name of all that is holy, as you said, did it denigrate women in every way? We’re not all bent towards masochism. That said, modern feminism has been hijacked by ant-racists and the trans community. It bear very little resemblance to the real thing (I’ve written about extensively) and I hope we can sort it all out soon enough.

Sorry Susanna, this ‘Reply’ button is way below your post but it’s the closes one, I hope you find this:

“You do know that in patriarchal times women were needed to provide as many offspring as possible”

Of course. And men were needed to die on the battlefield and in the coal mines. In short, women were needed to provide the men who would do the dying and needless to say women did no small amount of dying themselves. Society as a whole served the ‘needs’ of the tiny minority who owned the whole show. You can try to paint that as ‘men oppressing women’ but it is more honest to say that virtually everyone was oppressed by the upper classes and a female aristocrat was no less an oppressor than a male one, and saying that a Yorkshire collier’s life was spent ‘oppressing’ his wife is just stupid. He died at 40, she died at 65.

It makes no sense, and such thoughts have been largely abandoned.

I agree, so let’s stop looking for horrors in the pages of history. We’re here now. As a Patriarch I am quite sorry for the things my great great grandfathers did to my great great grandmothers. I support the liberation of women (and anyone else who is actually and in reality oppressed). However liberation industry workers have almost run out of real injustices and are now making them up so as to keep themselves employed.

“You need to choose one of the three.”

No, because Patriarchy and patriarchy are not the same thing. The former is the imaginary monster that the radfems blame all the world’s troubles on — it serves the same function as did Satan in the old days. The latter is a social system such as we see in Muslim countries. But there is a third possible meaning of Patriarchy and that is, simply Western civilization which has indeed been male dominated for reasons partially justified and partially unjustified.

“Because really, if men were such savages, a matriarchy would be the preferred mode of existence”

Sorry, men are far more savage than women, as every mother of boys knows perfectly well. And yes, matriarchy would be good, but in fact every family is a matriarchy and it is a crying shame that women have forgotten that they have far more important work to do that programing computers — the socialization of children is up to them, and thus the future of mankind.

“Why would women want to kill other women, is a move relevant, and far more interesting question?”

Yes, that is the interesting thing. Nothing is more vicious than a catfight. When women turn on women, Iwo Jima seems like a game of croquet. The stereotype is that women are always more civil then men, and whereas it seems to be true most of the time, when the claws are out things get … well, men’s jaws drop.

I’m a mother of two boys who are very gentle souls. I don’t have to prevent them from taking everything apart; instead they are very protective of their things and the things of other people. They are also polite, and well-behaved. They enjoy the “quiet” things, perhaps because I’m an author and spent countless hours reading to them, and doing things that weren’t “rough housing” but rather gentle. So I guess we all create the children’s characters by example. In other words, “savages” create “savages” borrowing your term.

I don’t prescribe to most modern feminist dogma. I’ve written against it extensively. But I still believe feminism was needed, because of the old coverture laws that were basically modernized feudalism. Women needed to be freed from it, just as men had been freed previously. What people are fighting about in our days is privilege, who has it and who doesn’t, and it’s a ludicrous battle. The privileges we talk about are usually human rights. Why should we deny anyone their human rights? I’m just as exacerbated with modern feminists as everyone, but I won’t throw feminism out with the bathwater. It was needed a hundred years ago, and it’s still needed around the world. That it has become a bickering fest in the west doesn’t help women who are still massively oppressed around the world. I can’t talk to feminists about it anymore than you can without being called a racist (I deleted my Twitter account because of of it) and I’ve blogged about the hijacking of feminism; women responded in droves. They are sick and tired of this shallow form of activism that serves only to fill the bank accounts of activists. I don’t mind men (sounds odd to say it, but needed nevertheless), I mind misogyny. I’m tired of going to a car shop and getting inflated estimates, just because I’m a woman (I mean, what do I know about cars, right?), I’m tired of people talking to my SO about something that pertains to me (again, because what to I know about renting an apartment). I’m a business owner and I’m constantly asked where the owner is. I know I look young, but that’s only half of the problem. And because of all of the above, I no longer talk about patriarchy, I talk about misogyny, knowing fully well that women use the system to their advantage too (I’ve never got a ticket, I know how to bat my eye lids). What I believe we need to do is to find a way to eliminate all the advantages and make the law apply to all in the same way, but to do so we need to do something sex appeal, and because of it, I’m afraid we’re stuck. Yet, again, all these men complaining how attractive women aren’t interested in them, sock it already! There are lots of women waiting to find a good man. Stop being so shallow and look for character instead of looks and you’ll find a good woman. Maybe the answer to our problems is the eradicating of the superficial western thinking that idolizes youth and beauty and the resurrection of good character. Who knows, but at least it’s a good start.

@Anita
“I agree.
Before post modernists adopted it , the term literally meant protecting and providing for women and children, whilst the matriarch nurtured children, grandchildren and the elderly, and helping her husband, socially, domesticly or in family business, according to her husbands station in life.

The system has been successful for thousands of years, perhaps that’s why post modernists hate it?

I can’t for the life of me see what’s wrong with Patriarchy?”

It didn’t literally mean protecting and providing for women and children, as women and children worked too. The matriarch didn’t just nurture the children, grandchildren, and the elderly while “helping” her husband. She worked, and hard. In most societies children ran freely between parents (especially in an agricultural societies and later in the commercial world). It was the Industrial world that separated women and men into different camps. And patriarchy wasn’t the cause of success; societies rose and died based on many reasons. It has, on the other hand, been shown that the more a society rejects patriarchy, and invests in the education of its women, the better the said society does. We have plenty of evidence of it on our modern world.

Reasonable! Less use of radfem jargon and more real thinking. I’m beginning to think this could be fruitful:

“It was the Industrial world that separated women and men into different camps.”

It’s been disputed. There is a sort of obvious truth to that, but some now are saying that even in preindustrial times, men and women still had very different ‘spheres’.

“And patriarchy wasn’t the cause of success”

No, of course not. May as well say that making cheese wasn’t the cause of success. ‘Patriarchy’ was just part of the seamless continuum that made up the culture. You can’t just ‘extract’ patriarchy as tho it were like taking the radio out of a car. Gender roles in their entirety were an organic part of the whole, along with religion and language and myth and technology and … everything.

Our legitimate task is to look at the modern world, and shuck genuinely outdated cultural baggage without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Alas the social engineers, propelled as they are with neo-Marxist Victim narratives are getting it wrong. Hate filled radfems are trying hard to destroy men entirely, and that’s not good for women — someone has to do the dirty, demanding, dangerous work and it won’t be women.

Indeed, some boys are gentle. My neighbor’s boy Jace is like that. My nephew Keith too. But some are little warriors. I was a bit of both. It can be tough on gentle boys. But no, we do not create this, it is inborn, tho of course we can make it worse or better. Keith was born gentle, Nick was born to be a hunter. I’ve apologized previously for under estimating you, but I’m tempted again: are you a blank-slater? Have you not noticed differences in your sons that are built in and none of your doing?

“But I still believe feminism was needed”

So do I, make no mistake. Not letting a man become a nurse simply because of his sex (as used to be the case) was simply wrong. Every society has these norms and traditions and stereotypes and hundreds of closed little groups resistant to change. We can in fact not exist without these things, but they go too far — we should remove pointless obstructions wherever possible, and of course it was women most effected. No doubt about it. Forbidding people to rise to their level of competence for some artificial reason simply prevents society from being as good as it could be.

“women who are still massively oppressed around the world”

Indeed they are, particularly in Muslim lands. But when I have to listen to some pampered girl in the department of wiminz studies at Harvard tell me that she’s oppressed, my eyes roll. They’re still stoning victims of rape in Pakistan — they call them ‘adulteresses’.

“I’ve blogged about the hijacking of feminism”

Glad to hear it. Yes, the sane women have let feminism be hijacked by the shrieking harpies in much the same way that the Left entirely has been hijacked by the cultural Marxist SJW storm troopers. Sanity must be reclaimed, and this is a job for all sane people together, men, women, of all colors and species and preferences and … this might be the limit … even left-handed cellists. (Or is that going too far? 😉

“I mind misogyny”

So do I. But the word has been corrupted beyond all usage. The harpies see misogyny even where men are at their best — opening a door for a lady. The task is difficult. We have assumptions, the brain is designed to make assumptions, in fact. We can’t do without assumptions. When I go for dinner somewhere, I do assume that the meal has been cooked by the lady of the house, not the man. 80% of the time I’m correct. We could see this as persecution (come to that, who would I be oppressing? the man — presuming he doesn’t do 50% of the cooking — or the lady — presuming that she’s chained to the kitchen sink?) … or maybe we should all relax a bit.

“knowing fully well that women use the system to their advantage too”

Yes! It’s a two-way street, isn’t it?

“find a way to eliminate all the advantages and make the law apply to all in the same way, but to do so we need to do something sex appeal, and because of it, I’m afraid we’re stuck.”

How did I mistake you for a twit?

My Lady! Yes, it is a dilemma. Until such times as we reproduce entirely in nutrient vats, sex appeal will be with us and dealing with it will be difficult. Using it as a vehicle for destroying as many men as possible is not kind. Overlooking rape is not kind. It’s always going to be a problem. Can we eliminate all advantages? I doubt we can or even that we should. ‘Women and children first’ is the right thing. It is right that men are more expendable than women.

“Maybe the answer to our problems is the eradicating of the superficial western thinking that idolizes youth and beauty and the resurrection of good character.”

Alas, sometimes it is just hatred of men. Do you recall the lynching of Dr. Hunt? Or the assassination of Al Franken? I think many of us were feminists until the raw hatred pushed us away. I remember the first time a radfem referred to my gender as ‘potential rapist’ . Thanks, sister.

@chip
I like your theory, but history tells a different story. Poor women have always worked, but agricultural and domestic work did not prevent them from nursing infants or caring for toddlers.

In England, in the late 18C and early 19C there was a massive shift as women were increasingly employed in factories, where for the first time women’s work interfered with their primary role as mothers. By your theory this should have led to the the empowering of men, disempowering of men etc. But England had no serious “women’s rights movement ” until the early 20C?

Alternatively,the first nations to give women the vote were NZ and Australia (1899-1901) which were still largely rural economies with smaller female work participation outside their home and farm. I have always attributed this aberration of suffrage history to three things.
Until WW1, marriageable women and marriageable men had a ratio of 1(woman):8-10(men) giving women from all classes, making Australasian women rarer, and more valuable (perhaps?) then European women?
The other factor perhaps is that the harshness of pioneer life may have promoted a higher level of interdependence between the sexes. This is the weakest theory as the US and Canada had similar beginnings.
The third theory is that the male suffrage fighters transported to Australia as convicts in the early 19C raised consciousness of universal suffrage.

@Atita
I must correct you
In 1800’s, women in The Dominion of Canada (and various parts of the USA) had the right to vote.
The qualification was often based on property ownership/wealth (income). Women who owned property and/or had wealth (generally inherited) could vote. when often their husband’s could not. Side note: generally the husband was still legally responsible for the wife’s debts. Whether he had knowledge/”co-signed ” for them, or not.
Also ( in CDN), voting rights where eventually extended to those who completed military service. Both men and women. This was prior to universal voting rights.
Karen Straughn ( girl writes what) cover’s these topics exceptionally well.

I don’t think painting men as the victim of some supposed misguided social programs is the answer either, if the problem really exists.

My father in law was 1 of 9 kids. My dad 1 of 5. Two generations ago kids were needed as additional labor to help provide for the family. Additionally infant mortality was higher at this time, my dad lost 2 siblings. Having theses children and caring for them as infants, preoccupied women. Increased mechanization and efficiency made additional children more a liability than asset, more mouths to feed with less return. These developments gave women more time and increased the demand for birth control. In third world countries with higher child labor and high infant mortality, the past roles of men and women are more prevalent. However these roles are not indicative of progress or affluence.
What needs to change is; the attitude men are not beneficial or are toxic, the idea that the accomplishments of men can not be celebrated without paying homage to women and the competition among genders. Men and women’s roles evolved through cooperation not patriarchy. Men and women choose roles during their respective epochs which best insured survival. Alternative systems or role choices did not survive. It is incumbent on men to stand up to the notions that male gender is toxic or problematic and to assert their worth.

Infant mortality rates weren’t even super high before Germ theory was confirmed in the late 19th century, and 2 generations ago you didn’t need huge families. You’re probably a boomer.

What needs to change is the complete removal of all affirmative action style policies and all of this ideological training that’s used to justify policies of “don’t give men opportunities, especially if they’re white.” This itself is of course a quite literal giant hurdle though since in America and other countries with supposed anti-discrimination laws, it is regularly ruled that somehow, magically, these don’t apply in certain circumstances because an accountable black-robed thug calling itself a judge FEELS a certain way–letter of law be damned.

“Standing up” just gets you attacked, dis-employed, life ruined, subject to physical violence at the hands of extrajudicial thug groups like Antifa who are in bed with the system. There’s big money behind especially anti-white male law and policy.

@Freidrich
Thank you for your response. I’m unclear about what being a boomer or not being a boomer has to do with anything.
If you are telling me all the data showing declining birth rates in Japan and western countries is incorrect, I will have to disagree. Two generations ago is in reference to my children. My father in law and his siblings did not have electricity or running water, they picked cotton by hand, loaded it onto a wagon and drove the mules to the gin when they weren’t milking the cows or slopping hogs. My dad developed histoplasmosis tending the family chickens. Most of these people are still living and all were needed to support the family.
I agree with you assertion that affirmative action policies should end but expecting someone else to do it is standing still. Antifa and their ilk are thugs and bullies. One must stand up to bullies otherwise they persist and flourish. It takes guts but I’m certain there are still enough men and women remaining to do it. Yes it is a formidable task but the only choices are fighting or whining. I applaud you for making your views known. Don’t stop, stay engaged and always vote.
Happy New Year.

Whether or not you needed or had large families depended a lot upon where you lived. My father was one of twelve (seven lived), my mother one of seven (six still alive today). Both born in the 1920’s. Extra hands were needed in both cases.

Agree on the removal of affirmative action, it disproportionately benefits the wealthier members of the advantaged communities who crowd out those who really need the help.

I don’t think there’s so much big money behind anti male policies as the quest for power, although money does follow or accompany power. The goal is to gain a voting majority long enough to rig the system so they can remain in power forever, forgetting the lesson of what happened to the Democratic-Republican Party in the 1820’s once the Federalist Party went extinct – it split asunder and the 1828 Presidential race turned into most contentious election the US had ever had (up to the 1860 race).

As other commenters have pointed out, family law and so-called “child support” are huge issues that this article and mainstream media refuse to address. The reality is astonishing. For a good, factual resource, seehttp://realworlddivorce.com/

The real question is why men still remained relatively engaged in society despite the reality of their social position as fathers, or even just as sexual beings.

So you’re all saying men’s greatest desire is to provide for women and children, and we need patriarchy to enforce this ideal, while you all decry all the b***es who collect children support and alimony? Okay. I’ve seen worse cognitive dissonance, but not by much. So you’re saying men want to provide for SOME women and children, but not for all, WHICH IS EXACTLY why women insisted they needed to be able to provide for themselves and society agreed, recognizing the need.

@Suzanna Krizo
There’s no cognitive dissonance.
Men want to provide for women (especially if they gave birth to their children), but they expect some reciprocity, whether it means having authority over their kids or some form of marital life as well as sex or intimacy or respect and power.

If the woman shirks her duties in this arrangement and instead runs to Big Brother government to use its monopoly on legal violence to force the man to keep up his side of bargain then there’s probably justification for the man to call the woman a leech and a b****.

Secondly it’s natural to be selfish and to want to guarantee the survival of your genes in the form of your children and nobody, it’s why communism works for the family unit but falls flat the moment it encompasses any significantly larger collective.

@Wallach Sir, you will not wring empathy from a solipsist. Every feminist is a solipsist where men are concerned. Men are objects to them, nothing more. Objects of utility, objects of no utility.

This is why feminists think men have all the “privilege.” They do not see Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Men (Ralph didn’t know he was writing that book for White & Indian & Asian men back in the day, but turns out he was.) They only see men with things they *want.* Come wartime she’ll be handing out white feathers in the ghetto though. Make no mistake.

They do not acknowledge female privilege. What use is that to a solipsist playing a power game?

They do not acknowledge the responsibility that comes with male privilege. What use is that to a solipsist playing a power game?

Why would a greedy grasping narcissistic solipsist acknowledge that modern “no-fault” divorce is rather unfair when teamed with “tender years doctrine” (i.e. 85/15 presumed custiody) and the Duluth Model (i.e. she can toss the man out of his house on fake DV charges/he is always arrested when the cops come for DV though women instigate 50%+) and antiquated alimony from back before women were “strong and independent” and “family courts” staffed with feminist judges & feminist counselors & free lawyers pushing all the dirty evil tricks in the book.

After all, this was and is lobbied for by the National Organization for Women.

I mean, why would a solipsistic narcissist grant you any of those truths? Why would she grant you that “family” court is largely a way for the government to slag off some welfare onto hapless men?

What use would that be to a Female Supremacist?
Instead she will straw man & lie & spin to avoid anything that might deny her power & money & misandric satisfaction.

She cannot and will not empathize with you.
She’s a Female Supremacist.

You can no more wring empathy from her than you can from a billy club or handcuffs or the new locks on the house you purchased back before you started “abusing your children.”

I will also point out the glaring omission of family law – the primary reason men have chosen not to get married or have children (ask them). Most of my generation’s parents were divorced, so we are hyper-aware that marriages fail, and it isn’t great for anyone. Particularly for boys, it is made clear at a young age that current laws reduce fathers to slaves. Add to that that men are often denied seeing their kids, and it becomes clear why suicides among men are increasing radically.

We need some serious political action on this front. Huge infrastructure spending would only be a short term solution, too short to get men enfranchised, married, and made fathers. Being recipients of a welfare program that puts them in the service of the State is also unlikely to bring men pride. The money would be better spent as loans for men to start small businesses.

The article is also curious, because it identifies welfare as the problem, but essentially suggests welfare as the solution. Wouldn’t doing away with incentivizes on single motherhood be more logical? Lots of women would be pissed, but we really need to explain to everyone how the current system harms their children.

And 150 years ago women chose to remain single in droves because marriage meant having minimum of 8 children and obedience to a husband without ability to leave when he decided to become abusive. What we have now isn’t perfect either, but let’s not pretend patriarchy is the answer to modern problems.

@Susanna
150 years ago, some women and men remained unmarried. They were also usually celebate and childless.

I don’t think any reasonable people object to this as a life decision.

The question is why should any woman expect taxpayers be forced to provide for the children they Decide to have, or for that matter decide to abort?

And why should women (or more rarely in this era men) be allowed to frivolously decide the spouse is no longer allowed to live in the family home with their children without reasonable course (eg. proven adultery, proven cruelty, proven abandonment, etc., as proven with photographic evidence, and witnesses before a magistrate in public court ) then why should they be made financially responsible for the spouse who chose to end the relationship?

Women are today raised to be so fragile and incompetent, my mother was a feminist (I am not)
My mother has passed away and I miss her every day, but thirty years ago, when she was middle aged and I was in my 20s, raising my child, planting gardens, caring for my husband, with zero career ambitions, she recanted to me, passionately, because she recognized she had never experienced the happiness I enjoyed, she’d never witnessed her children’s first steps, or true male admiration, since she’d left her father’s house, she sincerely wished she’d not had feminism or a career in her empty life and my motherless childhood.
By at least the feminists of the ’70s were strong, the feminists of today are so weak they depend on government “hand outs ” and court imposed payments from spouses they reject.

Your mistrust and sweeping hatred of men stands out equally to Yeah Right’s hostility toward women, even though the cause of this disturbance differs respectively. God forbid you two ever meet up in real life. The beauty of comment venues like this one is that personal experience features naturally, but it can overpower rational exposition. And has done.

How funny. A few days ago the comment section of an article was filled with indignant responses (mostly from men) how “The Patriarchy” doesn’t exist, how it’s only a feminist invention, and now we’re told “The Patriarchy” is the only way to motivate men to do something with their lives. And no one notices the cognitive dissonance going on here?

“This is now being discovered again, and it will not be long before we will all be exhorting each other to accept men as they are, and work with the grain, and to forget ideas about how it is only “the patriarchy” that makes them different from women. Then, once again, they will become more like women.”

This is such a trite sentiment. Men have always tried to define women, what women should be. We don’t need “The Patriarchy” to tell women how they can and should become “more like women.” A woman is a woman, there is no “more” to be added to it. And if a man can’t motivate himself to make something out of himself without being given unearned privileges, then he can only blame himself. Enough of this already.

Ah…. I see I misunderstood the last sentence. The author seems to suggest “The Patriarchy” makes men more like women, which is an absurd statement in its own. If men need to be given unearned privileges to make something out of themselves, then they are LESS like women. The whole premise is so fallacious that it’s laughable.

Typical feminist view of the world. Everything is about privilege and rights for men or women or any of the many other forms of identity.

This article is talking about roles for men and women. I invite you to think in terms of responsibilities.

Patriarchy is not some evil plan to put women in their place. That is what you are missing when you refer to previous posts. It is about treating people equally and at the same time encouraging them to be responsible for the good of the society, recognising the differences in genders. Something that is so obvious yet totally denied by feminists. It isn’t a zero sum game.

Women or Men should not have privileges, they should be encouraged to stand up and carry out their duties to the society.

@Pirus
As Elizabeth Cady Stanton once wrote, “While man enjoys all the rights, he preaches all the duties to a woman.” If patriarchy was about treating people equally, why was marriage, that made the woman civilly dead, a woman’s only option in the 19th century? The husband owned and controlled all assets, even those the woman brought into the marriage. In case of divorce (which only the man could initiate without having to prove cruelty, a hard thing to do in a society which turned a blind eye to domestic violence), the woman was allowed to take only her clothes with her, even her jewelry belonged to the husband. The irony of the law was seen in that a woman could keep things given to her by her lover, but not the things given by her husband. In theory the husband was legally bound to support his wife, but he could always divorce her, take everything and re-marry. This was one of the reasons for the Married Woman’s Property Law, a reform hat allowed women to keep the money they brought into the marriage, families being tired of young men squandering the family’s inheritance. So maybe you should read a history book or two to find out why feminism was born and all the reasons why patriarchy has never been, and never will be, about equal rights.

I was talking about western culture, but let’s bring it all back 60-70 years and see what it was like. Women couldn’t apply for a bank account or get a credit card without a male co-signer, pregnancy was a firable offense; Harvard, Yale and Princeton didn’t admit women as students, women had to give up their jobs once they got married (no married flight attendants, thank you very much), the Pill was only for the married, marital rape was legal and on it goes. Is this the world you want to return to?

Of course it’s always easy to cherry pick quotes Susanna, bravo!
So much knowledge of theocracy and so little understanding of history or it’s context. Whilst I’m not an expert on American history, though I suspect I may know as much as you, my specialty is early modern English, and of course Australian.
However it is quite right that a woman (or man) who breaks the marriage contract deserves nothing, if she has a lover, she chose her position.
It was actually very difficult for men to divorce their wife in that period. Equally difficult for women.

But Really, divorce in this era, was the reserve of the extremely wealthy, usually aristocratic, couples.
All divorced people, in this era, whether male or female, faced complete social death.

Going back to the ability for women to keep property, realistically this problem had been solved in the middle ages, marriage contracts almost always allowed a woman (even after marriage to be controlled by the wife) to control the income from the property She brought to the marriage, as opposed to her stealing the assets of a man she had betrayed. Even on a lower socio economic level farmers wives tradionally controlled the income gained from eggs and dairy as this work was under the wife’s control.

I would love to expand more on the lower classes, but my loving husband has cooked salmon and it’s dinner time here.

I have debated these topics frequently at Australian universities and look forward to your responses, whilst I gracefully acknowledge the waste time difference.

You have a point there, it all depends on how the word is used. To the radfem The Patriarchy is a System of Oppression that exists for the sole purpose of Oppressing so that men can continue to enjoy their Privilege (such as holding almost all dirty, dangerous, demanding jobs). To more honest people, The Patriarchy is another word for a functional society that recognizes how to harness male abilities. Note that 99% of anything that any society has ever achieved has been accomplished by men.

“A woman is a woman, there is no “more” to be added to it.”

But wait: All genders are social constructions, no? And all gender roles are thus also social constructions, no? Thus there is no such thing as ‘a woman’ until we construct it, no?

Humanity is a big place and you can make a list of female contributions that would fill a volume. But 99% has still been accomplished by men. Now, were it the case that we were interested in being fair, it is no doubt the case that part of the reason for the very small contribution of women over the ages was SEXISM. Probably even more could be explained by the simple facts of biology pre sanitation and pre birth control.

It is an open question what women’s unimpeded contribution would have been, and may yet be. Certainly more than 1% but it will never be 50% because genius is a male phenomenon. The data on this cannot really be disputed (but you will). Too bad the question becomes an ideological football. Genius and invention are what they are and if a genius is female or albino or Martian or short or fantastically beautiful or whatever else they may be, forget the Identity BS, they are what they are. BTW, on my personal list of heroes is Hypatia of Alexandria, Hildegarde of Bingen, and a dozen other women, many of whom you have never heard.

You are too funny! How do you know 99% has been accomplished by men? I assume you don’t have a time machine and you have had the opportunity to travel through time? You ASSUME men have accomplished 99% because literature is so heavily written by men, while you also forget the scores of women who wrote under a male name to get published.
As far as your assertion that genius is a male phenomenon, I invite you to go visit a MENSA meeting and make that claim. See if you get out of the room without getting a verbal flogging from men and women alike (34% of MENSA members in the US are women). Also, you discount other forms of intelligence. Having an IQ of 180+ and being unable to function in society isn’t a benefit for the individual. It takes a lot more than just booksmarts and ability to think abstractly to function in modern society. So from that perspective, men who are super smart are disadvantaged, and always have been. If you can’t relate to other humans, you are always going to be an outsider. And I guess the male pre-occupation with brain power (as seen in your comment) is what the whole “patriarchy doesn’t exist” comes from. Men who can’t find mates because of their inability to hold a normal conversation without making condescending remarks say it’s the fault of feminism. Incels fall into this category. So, if all men and women have to get married and have babies (as suggested more than once here) then being super smart is an impediment and no amount of patriarchy is going to solve that.

Also, feminism goal has always been greater participation of all humans in the realms of civic society. That you focus so much on genius is exactly why feminism was created in the first place. A society that over-values genius at the expense of ordinary humans and their concerns isn’t a society that is going to last very long. Women wanted to be seen and respected as mothers in particular, and that was something society refused to do. The long list of grievances from the early feminists highlights this in the starkest ways. I find it interesting that you choose to focus on a very narrow part of the population to make your case. But that’s what everyone who wants an elitist society chooses to do.

And Ray, how do you know I’ve never heard of these women? I’ve read Hildegard, I know about Hypatia. You’re talking to someone who has studied history, philosophy and theology. There are very few women that I don’t know about. You really think you’re all that, don’t you? It’s pitiful, I’m sorry to say it, but it’s pitiful.

It’s fascinating how Suzanna when thinking of accomplishments immediately jumps to inventors and the big stars of the show. Have you perhaps given a thought to the world around you? I’m not talking about the grand feats of engineering and brand new inventions and concepts, I’m talking about the modern life around you.

The computer which uses internet connection. The comfortable, heated, insulated house with electricity and running water. The road that connects to that house to the supermarket and (presumably) your climatized office with cushy chair. The utlity poles along roads with miles upon miles of cabling as well as the miles and miles of tubing and sewage underneath,
The garbage bags that periodically disappear when you put them in a designated spot, the gas pumps which always have more gas for your car etc.

I could go on, but I believe I painted a clear picture. Everything around us is a result of team effort of both men and women but it would be delusional to pretend that men in past (and present) didn’t have monopoly on the dangerous, back-breaking and often extremely unhealthy yet neccesary labor needed to create AND maintain the world around us, especially the modern variant of it.

Men are the drones in the background who ensure most of the infrastructure required for our modern life is not only maintained in constant uptime, but also expanded. In at least 9/10 cases it’s the man who climbs the poles to fix the damaged power lines during the snowstorm. It’s the man who wades into the sewage to pull out the tampons you flushed which blocked your toilet.

Maybe 97.34%. Seriously, the number can only ever be an estimate, where do you draw the line? I’ve seen estimates based on column-inches devoted to women in the Britannica, etc. Suffice to say that men have been responsible for the overwhelming majority. It’s a thing to be honest about. If you don’t want to be honest, I can’t make you but you know the truth as well as I do. And yes, absent sexism it would have been very different.

“(34% of MENSA members in the US are women)”

Sure. And as you go higher up the IQ scale, men come to dominate more and more strongly. Do you play chess? Women must have a separate championship, otherwise no woman would even crack the top 100 with the exception of the Polgar girls, of course! The interesting thing is that average intelligence is shown to be about even, but men dominate the ‘tails’ — more likely to be brilliant, more likely to be really dumb. We see this every day, don’t we?

“you discount other forms of intelligence”

No I don’t. We were talking about IQ, which is the kind of intelligence linked to science and invention.

“the male pre-occupation with brain power”

Sure. We focus on what God put us here to do, namely to build a better world. As you say, many brainiacs have lead unhappy lives, but who cares, they are only men and so they serve and they die. No one even asks the question if whether or not they were happy, it’s just not important, is it?

“A society that over-values genius at the expense of ordinary humans and their concerns isn’t a society that is going to last very long.”

I disagree. It isn’t one or the other. Genius gives us tools to make life easier, that’s all. All the ‘other stuff’ is what makes us human.

“Women wanted to be seen and respected as mothers in particular, and that was something society refused to do.”

You have that exactly backwards. The Patriarchy respected them as mothers — ‘women and children first’, remember? — but we are disturbed that they would rather force their daughters to study electrical engineering when the latter don’t even want to study it.

“The long list of grievances from the early feminists”

Of course. One might say that we can now ‘afford’ feminism.

“And Ray, how do you know I’ve never heard of these women? I’ve read Hildegard, I know about Hypatia.”

Sincere apologies Susanna. I patronized you. It is, frankly, a bit patriarchal of me, and I repent of it 😉

That Hildegard! One hell of a lady, no? They say the pope was afraid of her. Hypatia — men clamored to take her classes, Greek misogyny or not. There are stories of geniuses throwing themselves at her feet.

Susanna Krizo – “Note that 99% of anything that any society has ever achieved has been accomplished by men”. So you think that is quite funny, eh? I have a challenge for you if you think that this statement is false. How about you get rid of all of the possessions and technologies and necessities that you now own that were NOT designed, built and maintained by men and see if you have anything left to your name. Of course this includes any and all food that you may own that was produced, transported and distributed by men. Please comment after the challenge and let us know if you own ANYTHING at all.

Oh, and by the way, let us know how long it took you to stop laughing when you found out you owned absolutely NOTHING.

“But wait: All genders are social constructions, no? And all gender roles are thus also social constructions, no? Thus there is no such thing as ‘a woman’ until we construct it, no?”

Gender roles and gender are two different things. You can have gender without the roles, but you can’t have gender roles without gender. Roles make everyone into actors and it’s what people who don’t want to find their own path using their own minds resort to, because it’s easier.

You feminists are the ones trying to “construct” different roles for women. I have a suggestion to all feminists women out there.

They have all the rights and opportunities. What about focusing on their own career and progression (and best wishes for them) and stop preaching how the vast majority of the female population should lead their lives.

Believe it or not most women are perfectly happy with their life if they are left to naturally follow their instincts. That is if their mind is not “disturbed” at young age by the the tiny minority of driven people or other “disturbed” individuals.

@Pirus, although I’m largely in agreement with Susanna’s comments, I agree with you that feminists were wrong to denigrate homemakers (insofar as they did). As I understand it, feminism should provide women with choices and respect the different paths to fulfillment that individual women take.

Well then, gender is social construct and gender roles are even more of a social construct. In any case, where does ‘nature’ come in? Are you making a Freudian slip here and admitting that maybe there is something natural in gender after all? Of course there is, but one can’t usually get a feminist to admit it.

Again you assume a lot. There is a lot to biological sex. I don’t agree with trans-theory, because it is so heavily based on stereotypical gender roles. Just because there is such a thing as biological sex, does not mean that biological reality has to dictate every aspect of our lives. Just because a woman can have a child shouldn’t mean she is destined to provide unpaid labor to men. Nor does greater upper body strength mean that a man is destined to be a human ox. All humans have a mind, and we’re all invited to use them. A society that allows for individual differences and strengths, while recognizing biological realities is a society that is neither patriarchal or matriarchal. We all need each other.

I’m a woman and I tell you the patriarchy was Good for Women, feminism and ignorant, non fact based claims of post modernists ect. Are toxic to Men, Women, and most sadly children (most especially the murdered ones).

@Anita: fortunately for women like you, the Quiverfull Movement provides an option for those who miss the comforting embrace of patriarchy. Feminism provides women with options, including the option to reject its principles and submit to one’s husband.

I’d better read up on this Quiverfull movement. But if some women *want* a strong and protective husband, what’s wrong with that? Mind, as you say, if some women chose otherwise, that’s fine too. My niece The Doll just married a very strong Patriarch and she is very clear that she wants a strong protector to look after her while she has babies. She has no interest in nuclear engineering. But she beats me at scrabble.

But that’s just it. Not every woman does. I want an equal, who I can talk to and share my life with. I enjoy working, writing, thinking. I don’t need someone to protect me, I managed to travel around the world with a backpack in my early twenties and did just fine. Some women are and want to be independent and it doesn’t mean we hate men. We just don’t need or want what we’re “supposed” to be wanting. And I guess it’s a cultural thing. Scandinavian women are brought up to be strong and independent, it’s in our culture and has been for thousands of years; Viking women were far more fierce than men often. If some women want and need someone to protect them, good for them! But not every woman does, and we need to recognize that without the accompanying cries about misandry.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that in an overpopulated world motherhood itself is toxic. Cease all support now. Tax women who bear children. Punish pretty women who entice men to mate. Abolish Father’s Day and replace it with Sperm Donor’s Day. Amend the laws governing primogeniture and have all accumulated wealth revert to the state upon death. Say anything you wish, but do as you are told. What a wonderful world it will be!

“Some women are and want to be independent and it doesn’t mean we hate men.”

And that’s just fine. Maximum freedom — remembering that perfect freedom is impossible — is good. So long as I’m not being shrieked at that I’m an Oppressor, women should have every right to pick the life that they want. But there are costs and benefits to any choice. The costs are not Patriarchy, they are just the way things go. Choose to claw your way to the top of some pile (Thatcher) or have a joyful life with some kids, but don’t whine if you can’t have both at the same time.

One small detail: men, nowhere in the world, will tell women how to behave (because, they know they won’t listen), however, allover, and everywhere, women know exactly what men should do or not, and, they will never be tired, all day long, at any occasion, to let him know what and how.

Here’s an example: “How should a Christian woman dress is one of the subjects of heated debates amongst Christians. How modest is modest? What did the Bible say about appropriate dressing? What’s acceptable and what’s not? (“https://www.christiantoday.com/article/5-bible-verses-on-how-a-christian-woman-should-dress/103602.htm)

I’m not talking on what the Koran, the Bible or the cultural rules of a nation or folk are (for public, ordinary life outside), but what’s occurring in the homes, the households, and this seems even to be so in patriarchic societies (at least, that’s what I hear in nations where I used to live and work). But, of course, everywhere and always doesnot mean 100%, but somewhat less, I exagerate for reasons maybe not understood by women.

Some of them, Susanna, and of the most famous ones I know at least the main message. What struck me: they are all (=99%) written by men, mostly rather patriarchal ones. Schopenhauer is maybe the most interesting one in this respect, once thrown down by his mother (I thought it was) from the stairs at home, and ever since the great misogyne, small wonder.

What strikes me is your inability to understand that only a few authors were copied as manuscripts had to be copied by hand year after year. The Bible was almost lost, had it not been for Irish monks who copied it and saved it from extinction. History shows men’s attitudes to women who thought, who wrote: they were ridiculed (as seen in the case of Grimke sisters) and as a result majority of their works were destroyed by the tides of time. We know of Sappho, because she is mentioned in the writings of others, but the majority of her writings are gone. The same of all Athenian woman philosophers (we know they existed, Plato had women in his class). So your glib assumption that just because majority of women’s works were destroyed that they never existed in the first place is just hilarious to me.

@Susanna: rather clear that you read a lot of feminist propaganda, and, if of the right disposition, you better believe it too, it makes you live much better and comfortable. Yesterday, while googling related with the religion thread with the monk illustration(and for me the maya-link), I came across a certain bishop de Landa, who burned ALL the existing books and libraries of the Mayas (for being heathen) in Yucatan, just only a few things escaped. Unbelievable, that book burning, but it seems to have happened quite often in history, and not only of women stuff.

If I read so much feminist propaganda, why am I here? I would eschew this page like a burning lump of coal. Is it really so hard to believe that a person can actually think for herself and just because my views don’t align with yours doesn’t mean I peddle in propaganda.

And of course I’m aware of book burnings. Nazis did it too. And we don’t even know what was in the library of Alexandria that burned. But all these comments that women haven’t accomplished much is just ludicrous in so many ways. We’ve lost so much information to the tides of time and to base our modern decisions on what we don’t have is just utterly silly.

Quite so. However that is a real patriarchy and I pointedly contrast that with what we do here in the West where The Patriarchy is almost the opposite of a real patriarchy. But as a politically correct person, you must surely welcome Islam as the Religion Of Peace?

And how funny you think there is such a thing as a real patriarchy and a false patriarchy and we live in the false one, which means we have no real patriarchy. You all just keep on stumbling over your words in an effort to skirt the real issue.

“and we live in the false one, which means we have no real patriarchy”

Yes, that’s exactly it. Not sure why it’s funny tho. The Patriarchy — that imaginary construction of the feminists, does not exist and is — as you pointed out yourself — nothing like an actual patriarchy as they have in Arabia. Otherwise you’d not have made the contrast. Modern Western society is blatantly favoring of women and is the most woman centered society that has ever existed.

Oh Ray…… Really?? Male logic??? Omg…. logic doesn’t know gender, even Aristotle recognized it although he was as misogynist as they come. And you don’t seem to understand or know that 109h century UK and US were very much like modern Saudi Arabia (sans the veil). So you talk about patriarchy, not even knowing what you are talking about. Patriarchy is patriarchy, the rule of the fathers where mothers have none or little rights. In ancient Rome, fathers had even authority over their grown children till their death, which explains why parricide was so heavily punished as more than one person was driven to desperate means to assert their own independence. In our modern world, we have largely reversed the laws that gave men power over women, and I agree that for the most part we’re seeing sexism, not patriarchy. BUT there are always attempts to resurrect patriarchy as seen in the Quiverfull movement. They resurrected a really heavy-handed patriarchy and the results were disastrous. Thousands and thousands of men and women are slowly healing from the damage done to them in the name of this movement. So, in your own words, know when you’ve lost the argument.

Isn’t it interesting though that feminist blowhards like yourself are seeking to recreate Saudi Arabia in places like Britain? Every complaint about “manspreading”; not a single word of Islamic sex slavers euphemistically called “grooming gangs,” other than to scream epithets like “racist” at anyone who would point out that it’s occurring.

I was poking fun at friends of yours who really believe such things. Mind, I should not caricature you if you don’t believe in such nonsense, so I apologize.

“In ancient Rome”

In ancient Rome all sorts of horrors were routine, and slaves of all genders had zero rights at all. The fact that you need to refer to history demonstrates that you have so few things left to whine about in the present.

” In our modern world, we have largely reversed the laws that gave men power over women”

Yes, thanks for saying so. But strangely the shrieking only gets louder. Women are now overtly favored almost everywhere in the West, but the demands for even more favoritism only grow more shrill every year.

BUT there are always attempts to resurrect patriarchy as seen in the Quiverfull “movement.”

Never heard of them, do you have a link? God knows there are always nuts out there who want … pick something, anything, and there’s someone who advocates for it. The Flat Earth Society is alive and well.

Your comments seem to indicate that you believe that women, historically speaking, have not had any appreciable effect on men in society because of the “dominant” position of the latter. Were I a cynic I would counter that the effect of women on men via physical allure and related beguilements is undoubtedly one of the greatest forces (on men) in the material or spiritual world. But there is so much more. No man on this planet has ever operated independently of the influence, malign or benign, of women. Sometimes this dynamic goes sideways, unfortunately, and whole cultures can be misogynistic and suppressive. But other eras have seen productive relations between the sexes that result in prosperity and even civilizational glory, something that would be impossible were women subdued as you describe their lot. These relationships are inherently unequal and much more unequal in some societies than others.

You freely share examples of men acting horribly toward women in history yet you omit the far more difficult to discern history of women treating men badly– especially emotionally, where the female arsenal is far superior. This makes it a tough call if men have had it worse (violence in general, war in particular, dangerous jobs) than women (domestic abuse, dangers of childbirth) down through history, especially considering that men sign up for their lumps while women do not. The way we influence each other in personal life, the life that matters most, is not comprehensively recorded in the annals of history. What we feel today is based on what we know from experience of self and family, and a little reading. It tells me that women and men both suffer today in ways we never did before because of the success of certain ideologies derived from liberalism. We will find other ways to avoid the downside of patriarchy that do not pull so far to the Left.

I was just going to write about that, how human accomplishments seem to be so heavily male, while we ignore the fact that women participated; they just weren’t given the credit. Do some women treat some men poorly? Of course they do. But historically men have gotten away with more because the laws allowed it. What I find funny is that men told women to be happy with their lot in silence when they were discriminated against, but now men can’t seem to ever shut up when they feel the laws aren’t in their favor. We need a society that respects everyone equally. This is not the way to get it.

You mean the one on the tea picksters on the plantations and the pay-out check?? Yes, that one is one that I’ll never forget, if I,m ever going to write a book, it will be used in one of the chapters (on the differences, positive and negative, of the 1st and 3rd world cultures). Thanks for reading and approving!

@Dirk
I chuckled at your comment too.
I am old enough that I caught the tail end of the cash pay-envelope era, in the construction industry.
There was a pay master on site that handed you (at the ‘brass’ window)that holed envelope of banknotes & coins (w/pay stub).
There would be cars full of wives, in the parking lot of the gate, waiting for their husband’s.
I come from a’traditiinal’ family, and was young n very naive, so I couldn’t understand some of what I witnessed then.
‘patriarchy’ is way overrated…..
:))))

One of the ironies behind “radical social experiments” is that they have potentially been driven by activists whose thinking may have been shaped by prenatal exposure to higher than usual levels oftestosterone – an article that springs to mind – Frontiers in Psychology Sept 9, 2014: “Feminist activist women are masculinized in terms of digit-ratio and social dominance: a possible explanation for the feminist paradox.”

So how do you explain 19th century feminism? Were a large portion of women exposed to oftestosterone then too? Was the same true of labor activists? The Spring of Nations (1848) saw both the creation of the feminist movement in Seneca Falls and the labor movement that swept the entire nation.

The point of it is to attack the native (white) men who built and maintained the civilization. That’s the only reading you can get out of it when these selfsame feminists have nothing to say about the sex slavers euphemistically called “grooming gangs” in countries like Britain, the Netherlands, Finland and probably everywhere else you can find a sizable Islamic population in the western world. It started in Britain in the 1950s. The government covered it up for over 50 years and feminists still have to nothing to say about it, which shows what the movement really is; an attack on the civilization and its constituent people.

… or maybe feminists actually care about equal rights and believe that Western society still discriminates on the basis of sex (sometimes against men, more often against women). Seems more likely than your paranoid conspiracy theory that feminism is a wholesale assault against civilization.

@Krizo
Your understanding of the history of adult female ‘rights’ in western society, for the past couple centuries, is patently false.
Your understanding of the history of the ‘feminist movement’ is nonsensical.
Karen Straughn (girl writes what) would tear your ‘understanding’ apart.
And you accuse others of cognitive dissonance?
Tssktssk….
I will never be a’feminist’, because I am a egalitarian.

What I have of it, Ruth, just since a week or so: libertarian comes in two forms, ultra right and ultra left, this last one for example in the spanish civil war, area Catalunya, read anarchist and ultra left Emma Goldstein about it. If I,m not wrong, also the Ayn Rand form (small government and influence of topside-down institutions) are called lbertarian. Though, many people just do not seem to know the difference in libertarian and liberal and altright, and use the term intermittently.

“It is easy to see what satisfaction the institution of the dependent family gives to all sorts and conditions of men – to the tyrannous man what opportunities to tyranny, to the selfish of self-indulgence, to the generous of preening himself in the sunshine of his own generosity, to the chivalrous of feeling himself the protector of the weak.”

What a hard to read piece I didn’t get to the end, yes I found out I’m dyslexic at 37. I’ve basically given up, I was broken by the school system and told I was just lazy.

Although I did agree with many of the points in this essay, I found most of it disjointed and out of touch with the’common’ man. ie: blue/grey collar (non-white collar/academic)
The world I work in is 95+% men. We are injured, crippled and killed. Blood left on every job site, building our countries.
We (experienced) know our roles in society.
We do this because of love. Our family/clan/community/country.
Claim’s of ‘patriarchy’ is a source of mirth to us.
Within a family, all get responsibility for what they are good at.
We are the core of our civilization. We are those who fight to the death for what we are and what we believe in.
Discount us, at ‘you’re’ own peril.

He seems to think that society designs itself. This is not so. Society does not encourage men (or women) to do certain things to achieve a good outcome. This is attributing planning and forethought to “society” where it does not exist. The surge of women into the workforce was propelled by birth control, more jobs that did not require brute strength, the car, and fewer children per family. It was not designed.

We can see certain cases where one event caused others. The Christian emphasis on marriage helped reduce the past practice of harems and created a greater focus on the family. Also the Catholic church put a ban on marriage of cousins hundreds of years ago, and this led to a reduction in the unity of clans and thus greater participation in the larger society. But in neither case was this the design.

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. It is true that no society is manifest by design, but interests within a given society will have power and influence according to their size, organization and number. When a whole suite of interests– government, business, academia, media– exhibit and enact discernible values of modern liberalism (e.g.), is this merely a reflection of the nature of that society, or is there some forethought involved in how they go about getting what they want? People do act with “design” in mind all the time but most of us are not involved at a level that changes things on a macro scale.

There is so much anger from women against men, at a time when they make up 60% of college students, a majority of medical students, dominate vet school, and have so much choice. This anger is poison to relationships and to the family. We found that when my wife worked (kids little) she was criticized and when she stayed home with them she was criticized (by other women).

Each age has its strengths and weaknesses. In the past we had a firmer grip on the masculine virtues, but we also had needless wars and human life was treated cheaply (see the Factory system, I would say). We were less in touch with our emotions, and that goes for all people.

Now we have men who can’t build things, sitting around playing video games. I see that it has a downside (e.g. our perfection of the masculine virtues is less perfect) – but I don’t see the downside as being significant enough to warrant redesigning society. Rather accept that every positive has a negative attached, and all things have some downside. Our comfort is worth it, but it contains downsides.

I see the stereotype of the effete soyboy rather as a cultural extreme that predominates in certain micro-environments (e.g. Brooklyn, Berkeley) and the critique of this phenomenon tends to make it easy for itself by choosing extreme examples.

I have in mind a handful of men who engaged in (or were engaged in against their will) ,the horrors of the World Wars. Some became “PTSD Zombies”, some simply troubled souls who went on to be good fathers/grandfathers – they also built things with their hands, had the traditional masculine virtues – I don’t see them castigating modern men (me, and/or their descendants) for playing video games. They would probably have loved to play video games, rather than be shipped off to war. War is too serious a thing to be used for didactic purposes, even though it does bring forth certain qualities which may otherwise lie dormant.

Modern women who live in cities probably can’t cook that well, but it kind of doesn’t matter, if you can go to restaurants and/or cook a bit yourself, and/or eat more fresh foods. I remember feeling hamstrung by the more traditional women in my family who were always cooking all the time and obsessing over food. That’s my view. It was an oppressive thing to me honestly, just being around them while they fussed over the endless preparation of meals. I like the times we are living in, for the most part. If you make peace with the bad, you can enjoy the tremendous good.

But I get the idea that some kind of brake needs to be applied to progressive ideals. I think many people are realizing this now, and this belongs to a refinement of these same ideals (I believe) rather than their wholesale rejection.

Well said. Yes, there are a lot of unhealthy ideals running amok right now that needs to be addressed, but we’ve tried the whole patriarchy thing for eons and it never worked out all that well. Time to do something new, entirely new

Although the author’s general point about men needing an affirmation of “traditional” roles has merit, he errs badly in blaming any of the cultural problems on libertarianism (and presumably the Enlightenment). The various feminist movements have been heavily leftist. Moreover, the “liberation” many feminists sought was from the constraints and consequences of biology, to be achieved through law and government payments. He therefore also errs in asserting a role for government via welfare-type programs: the welfare state has been a major factor in our problems.

A “libertarian” rights-based society that valued the individual would leave people to make their choices, and the consequences of those choices. A more complementary relationship between the sexes, that had many traditional elements but left people free to choose other paths, would result. Instead, we have social engineering to produce a 50-50 society regardless of choices or aptitudes, with specific types of behavior and choices being subsidized at the expense of those making different ones. Social problems should be expected.

It’s also worth noting that virtually every major feminist thinker back to the 18th century had a personal life characterized by spectacularly dysfunctional relationships with one or both parents and/or men. The likelihood that they would discover the secret to a new social order that works is about as high as the lazy, unemployed parasitical Karl Marx doing so for the economic-political order. Which is to say zero.m

Susan B Anthony didn’t have a dysfunctional relationship with her parents and she chose to remain single, which isn’t a crime. She was a Quaker minister and believed in women’s rights because she saw what life without rights did to women. Your simplified analysis doesn’t help your case.

You are a sexist, homophobic (afraid of homosexual people), transphobic (afraid of butter and coconut oil), mysogynistic, racist, sexist, hateful, prejudiced, closed minded, white supremacist, intolerant, gender believer, godamn Russian loving Trump supporter! Don’t you even know that women stormed the beaches of Normandy? How DARE you suggest that there is a difference between men and women!!…bastard.

At the moment, the tax systems in most Western countries create perverse incentives for women to have children outside of marriage and provide men and women with little reason to remain married.

It does more than that.

Denmark and New Zealand studied this phenomenon and determined women are more burdensome on the state, even when then have children. (In Danish, so view in Chrome and it’ll translate to English.

In Denmark: Almost 40 years after women’s entry into the labor market, there remains a surprisingly large difference in how much women and men contribute economically to the welfare state. As the welfare society has collapsed today, women are a “deficit business” measured throughout their lives, while men pay more to the social fund than they get out of it.

A newborn Danish girl will receive more than $1.6 million from government in the form of transfers and public welfare benefits than she will contribute through taxes and fees throughout her life. (Bold emphasis mine)

In New Zealand (PDF): The disaggregation of fiscal incidence by gender shows that the incidence of tax and government spending differs significantly across age groups for males and females. Children and the elderly are on average net recipients in the fiscal system whilst working age men contribute significantly more taxation and receive less income support than their female counterparts, largely due to higher workforce participation rates and higher wage rates in employment. Gender composition in the over 80 age bracket is significantly skewed towards women resulting in an aggregate tendency towards higher net fiscal costs despite higher per capita direct and indirect taxation attributable to men over 80.

So, whether women have children or not, they cost the welfare state more than men.

But how much unpaid labor do women do compared to men? Who takes care of children and the elderly parents? That is money the gov’t doesn’t have to spend. I believe the unpaid labor of women outweigh the money spent by the govt’, which is why these discussions are always so lopsided.

This is where feminists enter in the realm of lunacy. Taking care of oneself and one’s own home, whether the person is single or not, is simply part of life, like brushing one’s teeth. A person decides how much filth s/he is willing to tolerate. Further, the gov’t does not mandate anyone have children. It is a voluntary act. The same holds for caring for elders. It could be argued that taking care of elders is repaying a debt incurred when the caretaker was a child, but this debt is not contractual, so the elderly parents have no legal expectation of care.

The relationship amongst family members re household chores, food preparation, and killing spiders is one of neither the state’s nor outside employer’s concern; it’s one to be negotiated between the spouses and children. If you think you’re doing more than your spouse, it’s up to you to set that right. Moreover, it cannot be measured without bias, not unless you want to invite the state into your home to tally the hours and types of labour performed. Further, if there is a non-working partner and there are no children, s/he is living rent free whilst consuming resources is s/he not? Of course, if a spouse wishes to be paid for housework, s/he can negotiate that the parter. Don’t neglect to declare that income to the tax authorities.

Frankly, if you’re tallying the amount of unpaid labour devoted to family members, you’re not cut out to rear a family. Remain single for the duration of your life. You’ll do less damage to others.

Says the man who I bet has never done housework on his own with multiple children in the house and who isn’t looking at a future without a retirement fund. Again, it looks easy on paper, it’s a different story when you actually have to live it.

Take care when making your choices. No one required you to have children. That was you and your partner’s choice. Perhaps it’s beyond your temperament and talent. Not everyone is cut out for it. Should have thought about it harder.

Same holds when choosing a partner. Presumably you didn’t wed a stranger. You would have seen how s/he lives and the amount of effort devoted to managing the household. Was s/he a slob? You should have discussed distribution of household work prior to wedding. And after you wed some time passed before the arrival of children. Did you find s/he wasn’t living up to your expectations? And you let that slide? Of course, there is a possibility that your expectations are unduly high. Do you follow your partner around tidying up after s/he has done so already?

Had you chosen to live alone you could have devoted as much unpaid labour as you like to your domestic life without developing a grudge over it. And you’d be building that nest egg. Or maybe not. Of course, as your colleagues took maternity leave and their work piled up on your desk, you could have developed a grudge over that.

It amazes me that people who fail to perform due diligence and can’t even get their own partner to do his/her bit around the house have the neck to think they have the household solutions to be implemented nationally. “My home life is wreck. Let’s make it so for everyone else.”

I think you have to concede that your life serves as a warning to others. Poor choices have their consequences. Avoid repeating Sue’s mistakes.

Anyway Sue, count your blessings you live in the era of home appliances and microwaveable meals. It gives you the free time to sit on the internet. Imagine your life of beating carpets, plucking chickens, churning butter, kneading dough, and laundering clothes by hand. Word to the wise: don’t wed the Amish.

How funny that you mentioned the Amish, as it seems they are brought up everywhere as the perfect model for gender segregated living. The thing is though that they have go visit the “English” when they need to go see a doctor etc. Preserving an ancient way of living comes with a cost.

And I think you would do well not to preach to others what you’re not willing to do yourself. You talk about being happy with one’s own choices? Then don’t go lecturing others about the choices they should be making according to you.

I don’t think you are being quite fair. True, we all mostly end up where we plan to be, but that does not make fairness go away. @Susanna is right that women do more unpaid work than men. Men expect that if they are the bread winner the woman will keep house. Saying that she might negotiate that away is not honest. Her labor is part of the economy of the home and if her husband’s income and tax were considered to be partly on her behalf, your numbers above would look somewhat different. Overall I suspect that you are correct, but forgetting about unpaid support for the family is not fair.

Overall I suspect that you are correct, but forgetting about unpaid support for the family is not fair.

She ought to talk to her employer, one of the two in the partnership is herself. In fact, I said this in my earlier comment: “… if a spouse wishes to be paid for housework, s/he can negotiate that the parter. Don’t neglect to declare that income to the tax authorities.”

Further, I have not forgotten about unpaid support. She’s has. She ignores that compensation is more than just money. It is the food in her belly and shelter over her head as well as the utilities and other goods and services such as vehicles, clothes, and even holidays. If her partner’s employer also provides non-pay benefits such as health and dental insurance, she’s also a recipient of that. If she’s not employed outside the home, how are all these things paid for?

Heck, let’s not forget the children. Are they providing unpaid labour? From setting the dining table to shoveling snow, are they too working at home without a wage? That’s child labour to boot, which is illegal in much of the world, right? If we’re going to entertain Sue’s argument that domestic life is unpaid labour and this is unjust, then we ought to examine all of the ramifications, not simply the ones she prefers to examine.

People such as Sue see only see one-half of the picture. I’m not getting paid (money) is also I’m not paying (money), is it not?

Ultimately, a person lives with the outcomes of his/her choices. She chose to form a life partnership, chose to have children, and chose to exit the workforce. The outcomes of those choices, like all other choices, are a mix of good and bad. You forego this to get that.

It appears to me Sue views domestic life as a business partnership, one bereft of quantifiable benefits because she refuses to see them. View the family that way and you’re bound to be very displeased. She doesn’t want to be a parent, she wants to be an employee. This is why I think Sue is temperamentally unsuited to such an arrangement. The grudge she feels will rub off on her children.

How funny that you mentioned the Amish, as it seems they are brought up everywhere as the perfect model for gender segregated living.

I mentioned the Amish because they live a home life without modern conveniences and amenities. It’s indisputable modern appliances have eased the burden of housework both in effort and time. I don’t advocate gender segregated living. If a female wants to get behind the plough whilst her husband prepares lunch that’s fine by me.

My argument and difference of opinion with you remains the same when men also choose to remain at home and rear their children whilst their partners remain in the workforce. When a person chooses to exit the workforce, for whatever reason, they also choose to accept the outcomes accompanying that choice.

Use your freedom to choose wisely, Sue. Once you’ve made that choice, accept the deal you made.

And you @ga gamba cant even spell a person’s name right, yet you deign to preach everyone on their “roles” (good grief man, my name isn’t Sue, and you know it. Enough of the insults already). If a woman works in the home all her life, the man decides to divorce her and marry a younger woman, she’s left with nothing. No SS, retirement, and although this could have been negotiated, most young women buy into the lie of “he’ll never leave, romance forever.” And suddenly they are 50, without an income. So you can talk all you want, but as long as the romance propaganda machine keeps on deceiving young women, your talk is as idle as the wind.

If a woman works in the home all her life, the man decides to divorce her and marry a younger woman, she’s left with nothing.

Depends on the divorce law. In much of the developed West each partner is entitled to one-half the assets created during the partnership. Further, retirement savings such as an employer-provided pension, 401(k), etc. earned by one spouse is considered a joint asset of both, which means it’s subject to division in divorce, typically. And alimony also exists; it’s awarded in about ten per cent of US divorces. Alimony wasn’t common in the past too, with about 25% of divorce rulings in the 1960s ordering it, and women participated much less in the workforce then.

Of course, in the event of the divorce she won’t have to clean up after her spouse, which was the source of her grievance. So, that’s a win. And if she can train her cats to fend for themselves entirely and defecate in the toilet (don’t neglect to lower the seat, cats), she’ll be cooking with Crisco.

Sue, you have some very firm opinions that are unsupported by facts. You ought to try harder to sort yourself out. Do so and the delusions that have seized your mind and enraged her heart may dissipate.

The most absurd concept presented here is the idea that taxing single men at a higher rate will solve anything in a society where young men are already dropping out or going MGTOW. It is certainly not a plan, that will work in this society, and neither will having unemployed men taking care of children on a large scale as was suggested by the author. That would involve huge numbers of working mothers putting their trust in men on a large scale. Not going to happen any time soon, particularly in the anti male environment we currently live in. So while this writer clearly sees that there is a problem, he is unable to provide any logical solutions that seem remotely practical.

I have another theory:
perhaps the anti-male environment has been created by hysterical neurotic female supremacists who are

–>unable to empathize with men in the least
–>unable to even SEE the downtrodden invisible men with nothing for them to TAKE
–>unwilling to admit to any of the dozens of privileges they already had as women
–>unwilling to admit they are the safest most prosperous women who ever lived
–>unwilling to admit that men created this world largely FOR them (well, for attractive women anyway)
–>utterly dedicated to whinging for every possible new privilege be it traditionally male or just some stupid new bit of lobbying for advantage
–>and utterly unwilling to accept ANY RESPONSIBILITY whether it be the sort that accompanies male privileges
–>or for any horrific (and largely INTENDED consequences) of their sick supremacist ideology

Who need to be told
“NO.
Fuck OFF
Take your eternal dissatisfaction & hypergamy & greed and whinging & lobbying and
SHOVE IT UP YOUR FUCKING ASS.”

Or at least “go the fuck away and shut the fuck up.
You’ve done enough damage.”

Women are so miserable men have actually surpassed you in overall happiness DESPITE everything this author & wiser cite.

That’s how stupid and shitty female supremacism is.
You ruined your OWN happiness… and you have no idea who you did it for.
Because it was never about equality.
Not ever.
Not for one fucking minute.

YR thanks bro, love your passion. Please don’t forget the weaseling male “allies” that have been accomplices in the hope of getting sexual attention. We have one or two that contribute here. Seem to always be elitist professor types that get paid a lot for producing nothing.

Omg, lol, will you incles never stop your childish antics? You built the world for attractive women and now those attractive women don’t want to have anything to do with you? How unfair!!!! lol, lol, lol. And jfyi, I’m not unhappy, most women I know aren’t. Neither are most men I know. If you would for once just realize that it’s your deplorable attitude towards women that prevents you from ever finding a mate, maybe you’ll have more luck in the future. All the best and try to cheer up, k?

@ga gamba Yes, in western societies men pay vastly more tax then women do, and they spend vastly less of all earned income as well. Of course there may be other factors involved, such as unpaid forms of labor, where it is often claimed women do more than men, but the actual tax revenue produced by women is markedly less than men, and they also draw from those same tax funds at a much higher rate than men. Of that there is no doubt.

@krizo…”And again, the taxation of single men has been vogue ever since the Greeks 2500 years ago…Greeks were intensely patriarchal”
Stupid comment, this is about young men today and not ancient Greece. We don’t live in an ancient society, and we do not live in a patriarchy, so the influences on men are certainly not the same.

@MZT
Stupid comment? lol
If you read the comments above, most men (and some women) seem to be in favor of resurrecting the ancient form of patriarchy and that came with heavy taxation of single men. None of you can have it both ways.

Susanna,
It seems to me that supporters of patriarchy on this thread/site are happy to take on board thoughtful criticism of it, especially as it has existed in past centuries.

Speaking of having it both ways: you have castigated men of the past for their oppression of women and you also tell us how terrible men are today, even after much of the “patriarchy” has been shattered and women enjoy greater comfort and freedom in the West than in any period of history (as others have pointed out). Careerism, birth control, suffrage and elected office, even so-called freedoms that were viewed dimly in the recent past (playing the field, divorced, single with cats, etc.) hardly impinge on a woman’s social status today.

I believe even you recognize that not all women enjoy these freedoms all around the world. Majority of women still live in patriarchal societies where their rights are few and far between. What I object in our western world is this constant whining that produces nothing. I see it from both sides. It’s as if we are so bored and spoiled we have noting better to do than harp about the other side while in Kenya women still can’t own land due to cultural prohibitions, although legal. Millions of women have no say who they are married to, and education is still a man’s domain. In the church, millions of women are told to shut up and obey. The same is true of Muslim nations. And yet, here we are, men typing away how all they want is to provide for and protect women, while they can hardly contain themselves in their abject loathing of women. It makes little sense. On the other hand we have women who just can’t make up their minds how much virtue signaling is enough. It’s a toxic concoction and I really think we need to find a way out of it. But I can already tell you that whining about isn’t going to produce anything other than heartburn.

A way out of it is for feminists to stop campaigning for unfair privileges in the west, and focus all their attention to the rest of the world where Equal opportunity doesn’t exist. And no, that does not mean equality of outcome.

Tackle the burning injustices in family law.

Stop attacking the family and marriage institution s in the west or masculinity.

And men should acknowlege that past injustices did exist and still exist in other parts of the world, but we have moved on here in the west. When feminists keep talking about history, it means they have nothing legitimate to complain about now (in the west). Move on for goodness sake.

In another comment here I chided you for not distinguishing between private and public humanitarianism. I think here you have similarly conflated two ideas that are bridged by a broad and varied terrain: local vs. global concerns about how women fare in society. You believe that we should care as much about women who are friends or even family members as much as we do about women in Cuzco or New Guinea. Practicability aside, is this a reasonable position to maintain? By what rationale?

Liberalism makes a lot of noise about universal equality and denies natural distinctions or levels of caring and concern. As if paradise would arrive if only we refused to rank the importance of self, family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, countrymen, etc. I would like to think this idea is equivalent to the Christian view of all of us being equal in Christ, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ entreaty we should *consider* the other as equal as a social baseline. But many liberals seem to pride themselves on a more literal interpretation of equality and equal outcome. I don’t know anyone who actually lives this idea in practice.

We should of course care about our fellow man, anywhere on earth, and come to his aid where it is wise to do so. Yet there is something contemptuous and cavalier about insisting that other cultures in other countries should adopt our enlightened ways (only a little sarcasm is intended there). If stone age tribes can live in jungles with our utmost reverence (also with a dismal record of abusing women and homicide), why don’t we feel the same about larger groups? What gives us any right to coerce Muslims or Chinese peasants to treat their women the way we think they should be treated?

“Perhaps the anti-male environment has been created by all the sexual abuse scandals that keep on popping up on a daily basis.”
Yes, the alarming number of female teachers having illegal sex with their students is a substantial problem in western society. We seem to be having some sort of tsunami of that type of appalling female behavior in the last few years. And these poor children are much more susceptible to female sexual grooming than some hollywood actress/waitress who has already been around the block lots of times. The well being of the children should be front and center in this society, not adult feminist fools like that Argento woman who has paid off her own teen victim, while simultaneously claiming to be a victim herself. Such incredible hypocrisy.

huh?? Of course we can, you simply have a patriarchal system, but do not tax single men extra. Quite simple really. Our patriarchy would be a modern one. There have been, and are today, numerous patriarchies that did not/do not tax single men at a higher rate. And regardless of whether we have a patriarchy or not, it is a bad idea in a modern setting.

@MZT
Thank you for your honesty. So you want a modern patriarchy that spares single men from the burden of overt taxation. How do you suggest society takes care of these single men in their older years when they don’t have children to care for them?

@MZT
I’ve worked with the elderly. Men who aren’t married and don’t have children need just as much help in their older years as anyone else. Who will provide this help? Without taxation there won’t be anyone doing the work. Should we adopt the old Viking way of just killing them off when they get too old? What is your plan of action here?

“I was waiting for this. Just tell me, the female teachers, do their superiors engage in systematic denial of facts, shuffling them from school to school? Didn’t think so.”

What in the world does that have to do with anything?? We have each year an increasing number of female teachers grooming young children and committing illegal sex acts with students in this society. The issue must be addressed on a large societal scale and acted upon. Such women must be imprisoned for the same length of time that men are to act as a deterrent to other women who might wish to have perverse sex with underage children. Fortunately a few have received lengthy sentences recently, but the problem needs to be addressed much more at the societal level so that all female teachers understand that just because they are in a position of authority over young people does not mean they can abuse that power for their own personal sexual pleasure like so many already have.

“How do you suggest society takes care of these single men in their older years when they don’t have children to care for them?”

Oh come on, that’s ridiculous….the same way society plans to take care of single women obviously.
Many women are not having children anymore, they live longer than men and there is no talk about them paying any extra tax, so how exactly is this future society planning to take care of old single women, and why should it be any different than men?

Older women take care of children, it’s a historical thing. Older men don’t. Also, older men need more care, because they don’t take care of themselves. And yes, they die earlier, but need more care before they die. You can complain all you want, but the statistics aren’t in your favor.

And of course you have had enough it it – until the day you need someone to take care of you. The young never think of what it means to grow old. Do you have children and grandchildren willing to do the work? I hope so, for your sake.

Also, you forget that lots of single women have children without committing to a man. It’s the men who are left without children to care for them. Very few men decide to adopt a child while being single, but women do. So your argument is weakened by that fact.

It’s funny how you all can’t deal with logic while you rant about stereotypical living. And how many children were stolen from their mothers in order to place them in these “stable” homes in Ireland? It’s a shame that has not yet been apologized for.

It is too late for you to ‘re-jig’ your distopia to make it more acceptable/appealing to men.

Your gyno-centric society has been exposed.
There’s some amusement in seeing the women in the comments section though discussing how they’re going to make men conform to ‘xyz’ behaviours, because men doing so would suit them.

We’re done ladies. We don’t need you, we never did. This distopia you’ve all created is one we want no part of. We will not aid you in fixing the mess you all created, we don’t care if you ever fix it. We will not rejoin your society.

Finally, some good news! The racists can retreat to their white ethnostate, the MGTOW misogynists can populate a version of Paradise Island without women, and the rest of society can move forward without wasting our time with embittered reactionaries who can’t cope with change. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

In my experience every human being dies.
And while you talk about combat, we talk about childbearing, which costs a lot of women their lives. But I guess it’s not important for you since it’s not something you participate in.

“But I guess it’s not important for you since it’s not something you participate in.”

Same lady as the last post I replied to? Thoughtful, nuanced and civil? Now back to being catty and petty? That’s why I thought you must be a twit. Leave that school girl level of sniping behind you Susanna, your last post showed you to be far better than that.

Yeah, that used to be the deal: men died in wars and industrial accidents and of industrial pollution, and women died in childbirth and of abuse. Not very nice for anyone. But no normal man is ever going to send a woman into lethal combat, it just ain’t natural.

Women are enlisting in the army. You’re just going to have to deal with it. And as far as seeing brutal things, any ER nurse and doctor can tell you tales that will make your hair raise, so give the whole notion of women being so “fragile” up already. Most of us have seen it all.

Oh Dave…. you don’t need women, uh huh. Did you need a woman to be your mother? But I agree with @dellingdog, let’s create an island for all the men who just can’t stop whining about how terrible life is for them, especially when they now say they don’t need us (I guess they’ll have robots for sexual pleasure or just take care of it on their own). Within a generation their kind will be gone (as they won’t have children). I find it really funny how all these men look back in history and talk about how “happy” women were when they less rights, but now that men have (presumably) less rights, they just can’t stop complaining. It says it all.

We didn’t need you to reafirm the hatred for us, which fills every inch of your very existence, we already got that message, from the screeching preaching of hatred for masculinity you’ve all been engaged in.

Please don’t judge all women by the rantings of a few, loud and unthinking women. But based upon what is often reported, versus what we experience, I can’t blame any man from wanting to excise women from their lives.

@CLA
I wonder sometimes how the loudest and most vociferous of women are going to cope with the future they’ve created for all of you, and your daughters.

It would seem you only have two options.
1) Submission before Allah.
2) Being taken forcefully by disciples of Allah.

With 1) you get to be the property of the men of Allah, valued as being less worthy than they are.
With 2) you get used until they have no use for you, then they’ll dump you in a mass grave, as they did with all the Yazedi women who were of no use to them.

You’re all about to discover what ‘toxic masculinity’ is. Just as those two daughters of the baltic states did on a Moroccan mountain. Its no concern of ours though.

I find your comment rather odd. If women hated men, we would already have created our own island and made men irrelevant (which is what men have always done within society, all those men-only areas where women weren’t welcomed, such as the university, the parliament). I doubt women have quite yet reached the levels of hatred that are seen in the more than two thousand years of literature where women are denounced as simple-minded, wicked, only out to destroy the man. And I can tell this hatred hasn’t gone anywhere, as seen in all the comments in this thread. And yet you all wonder why you can’t attract women. It’s quite the conundrum to live with.

Susanna, I looked you up and understand you better now. This is a “profession” for you. I am also very familiar with CBE. The problem I have is that many in these sort of groups “demand” and shame. .For crying out loud, seek to create something better instead of demanding old top down institutions hire women. But that’s hard work!

An an older feminist type who believed in earning a place at whatever table, I was appalled when CBE types protested at the SBC convention asking pastors to confer “agency” on women. And worse! Some hypocritically signed the BFM2000 to be “acceptable” to the male leaders which goes against their stated goals! Some are CBE speakers! I can’t take them seriously.

I wanted to tell them “Agency” comes from God and our constitution. What you guys are really saying is that church must practice affirmative action for female pastors in a denomination. No meritocracy needed. They want the “position” as a female “right”. Sadly, women are just as capable as men to act as tyrants when they get power. One isn’t magically better by way of plumbing. They just use different methods. The institutions are as corrupt as they can be. I have had a lot of experience on that score as a consultant.

Whatever happened to building your own? You probably recognize the name so I will mention Katherine Bushnell. That’s the sort female I descend from. My grandmother was a Methodist, college educated Temperance League Suffragette! She was only about 20 years younger than Bushnell. They were pioneers who were “doers”. That is what changes more minds in the process.

These were Women who transversed the male workplace and earned respect the hard way. Key word, “earned”. They went on to do what they set out to do instead of waiting for someone to clear the decks for them. Whining about it wasn’t an option.

Well @Lydia, that’s never been my position and it’s never been the position of the majority of women in the church. In the church the calling to become a pastor is a calling: you are called by God and the church recognizes it by the affirmation of laying of hands. In the past the church has refused to recognize the calling of women to the ministry of teaching, but this refusal began in the 13th century when Thomas Aquinas created his Summa: a synthesis of theology and Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle, whose biology has been debunked, posited that the woman had reason, but without authority. And so the church taught for 700 years that the woman was created subject to the man and subjected to servile subjection as the result of the fall. I’ve written about it plenty, so there’s no need to go into the details. but the thing is that modern women who go to church want what the Bible promises them: equality. The man and woman were both created in the Image of God and that itself guarantees their ability to present God. It has nothing to do with undeserved positions. God calls whom God calls. All we need to do is recognize it.

Susanna, I don’t think we define “church” the same way. You are focused on the historical state institution or the 501c3 of our time and place. Now it’s voluntary. Few can stand in your way to minister if that is the calling. You are either fighting a straw man or want to be accepted into the “institutions” that exist because of donors.

My mom spent decades in the inner city churches because of the need. They didn’t care if you were female. But it wasn’t glamorous or respected. There are places for the called.

You speak as someone who has an honorable mention from the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Yes, women can serve, but they shouldn’t expect to get anything in return. I wonder if you’re quite as cavalier with your retirement checks?

If you don’t need us, then go find an all-male city and decide for yourselves how you will arrange the cooking, cleaning and sexual favors, before you all die out due to none of your having children. That’s called male prison in normal language, isn’t it?

Over-population AND “global warming” have been pretty well debunked as sufficient cause for ANY kind of draconian social engineering by Central Planning. Not that they don’t still dream about it, but the observed facts are not in support. Nor will people tolerate it–see “gilets jaunes.”

Dammit, LR, you’ve uncovered our deep, dark secret: the past fifty years of environmental science has been part of a vast conspiracy theory to impose a totalitarian one-world government. Future generations will celebrate you as a great hero, I’m sure.

What I would like to know from Susanna (very prominently present on this thread): is there any naughty experience in your personal life that is haunting you? (I’m not an psychoanalyst, but interested in psychology, yes). Are you happily married with children, single, or divorced? Of course, you don’t need to answer me, it’s just a question, an attempt to get reaction!

@dirk
This has been boredom therapy. 🙂 Other than that, I’m a women’s rights advocate in the church where women aren’t allowed to teach or preach and are duty bound to obey their husbands to the point of accepting abuse. None of the rights you speak of exist in the church, which is still stuck in the 19th century. I sometimes hang out in the secular realm to find what arguments will seep into the church and vice versa.

Happy new year to you, Susanna. And about that male dominated church, that’s only so in the last, and the western style religions. Before, and e.g. in the Inca and Maya time in the Americas, there were gods together with goddesses, and not only of fertility and crop growth. Lamentably, in our Western world male virtues (warfare by far the most important) were the ones that counted most. It was worse, these Gods, in monotheism, did not even tolerate another person/deity or power as compagnons or venerable equals. Some western feminists (such as Elizabeth Jenkins, just only today came across of a new age journey book of her) travel off to those places and trails, and find themselves much more at ease among descendants of those Incas and Mayas

fyi, susanne, because just read you left your beloved male dominated christian church: a few of those Maya goddesses:
-Alaghom Naom Tzentel= goddess of thought and intellect
-Chin = goddess of maize and homosexuals
-Ixtab= goddess of suicide, death at childbirth, in battle or ballcourt
-Ixcel= Rainbow goddess of childbirth, her shrine still venerated on Isla Mujeres (Island of women) in Mexico, where I once spent a holiday with my mother (now dead), I just only now and here learn about this coincidence, thanks to Google (and you).

I’m aware of the existence of other gods/goddesses, but thanks for the list.
On the other hand, why in god’s name, can none of you spell my name right? I mean, it’s right there in front of you, it can’t be that difficult. I know it’s the Scandinavian spelling, but I’m Scandinavian, and so I would expect you all to pay at least one second of attention to get it right. I find it utterly moronic that all of you keep on misspelling my name, but of course it makes sense since you can’t spend a second to consider my arguments either. The true loss of intelligence to entertainment is showing.

The problem that you recognise is that society has been abusing and hating men for decades to the point that they commit suicide in droves, while placing women on a pedestal protected by volumes of law and armies of bureaucrats.
You propose to fix the problem by reducing single mens benefits yet you don’t once mention women. Benefits are already so low it is almost impossible to sustain life on them, it won’t work, it has been tried, it failed. You can’t rehabilitate a beaten dog by beating it harder, you need to stop beating it and give it lots of love and treats, or the dog just whimpers and dies.
Women need to be knocked off their pedestal, remove benefits for single women, refuse access to university for women that aren’t mothers, no more no-blame divorce, no more rights to your husbands money, no more free houses for having a baby out of wedlock that a man has to pay for.
Give the houses to the single men, force the women to compete for his attention. Women refuse to marry down hence all the ‘where have all the good men gone?’ articles, until we structure society to advantage men to make them appear like a ‘good catch’ we will carry on collapsing. Until we punish women for being disloyal and hypergamous they will carry on discarding husbands and destroying families.
Feminism is the problem, not men. Fix feminism.

interesting essay, absurd comments… for the INCELS: hit the gym, develop a job skill, make some bank, find a “slump buster”, have faith in yourself, repeat… for the MGTOW: keep doing you but drop the bitterness and negative expectations, the world (and a few other things) will open for you soon…

and for the men worried about hypergamy; dont be. focus on being the best version of yourself that you can be and you’ll wind up being some womans idea of a hypergamous mate and she’ll be glad to have you and you’ll be glad that shes glad. it’s okay, it’ll work out…

And what’s so funny is that it’s not just single women who are supported by the gov’t. The Hasidic Jewish community of New York leads a very patriarchal lifestyle and they are heavily subsidized by the gov’t. So it seems to go both ways in our industrial world.

Hey susanna
I have persevered to the end of the thread. But I just could not let you have the very last word
It seems your role in the church allows you to repeat your well rehearsed POV in a forum such as this. But still you stay within that structure. I find that most interesting.
The anger of some in this thread seems deep and visceral. I imagine a lot of grief and loss.
Paul Tyler’s suggestion that we all just pay attention to our own lives echoes prof Peterson’s rules
The article that led to this thread offered little of worth in suggesting viable changes.
Still … here are people from all over the world having a reasonable conversation … I just love the 21st century.

I left that said structure at a great personal cost a few years ago. I recognize the anger and I sympathize with it, but it doesn’t make reality any different than what it is. There is a lot a lamenting about dual incomes, without the recognition that before WW II most Americans lived in small apartments or a village and 30% of American men were found to emaciated to serve due to food shortage. The Suburbia was created after WW II with cheap housing and govt’ guaranteed loans, food became readily available and education was also free for those coming out of the war. Yet, the 60s found that they needed two incomes to replicate the 50s. And we’re just the next generation finding that without gov’t subsidies, it takes two incomes to afford the polish lifestyle the generations before 1950 couldn’t even dream of. So what I’m saying is that it’s absurd for everyone to blame feminism for the ills that were caused by the gov’t no longer subsidizing education and healthcare, the biggest bills Americans face right now.

Just fyi, these forums are funny in the way everyone assumes to know every detail of everyone posting, yet no one knows a thing – not one detail. Which makes these forums such oasis of finding stereotyping and how it’s done in the real world. Thanks for the conversations, I’ll be blogging soon.

As a later baby boomer I just don’t relate to all this social engineering that’s in the article. I come from a long line of educated, professional and formidable women. But what about their husbands? They were productive formidable men who were not intimidated one bit about having a smart, clever wife. No one was whining! They were “doing” and they faced life’s obstacles with grit and resolve.

Yes, it’s true that young white men, who aren’t Marxists, are not exactly sought after in many venues but this is a glorious opportunity for entrepreneurship. We need more “self governing” people. Period. More “individuals” who shun the collectivist thinking and social engineering. That bureaucrat in a cublical, with a guaranteed pension, regulating your life— has no clue. That left wing professor has never had to meet a payroll. That’s who we need to “engineer” into something meaningful and productive by not being ther “customers”.

“Other than that, I’m a women’s rights advocate in the church where women aren’t allowed to teach or preach and are duty bound to obey their husbands to the point of accepting abuse. None of the rights you speak of exist in the church, which is still stuck in the 19th century. I sometimes hang out in the secular realm to find what arguments will seep into the church and vice versa.”

Church is now voluntary, though. No state church anymore! So women CHOOSE to obey such. Yes, getting out is hard and requires a lot of grief. I say this as a “Done” because I am done with corrupt institutions. There is a lot of money in Jesus these days for all sides including the left. See Tony Jones and his “legal and spiritual” wives.

But, Government isn’t voluntary and I prefer not to be socially engineered —even at the risk of being called mean and hateful. I just don’t think Gov bureaucrats know best for my family.

By this logic, living in a country, any country, is a choice too. Isn’t that’s why people tell others to “Just leave” when they criticize what they see? Church isn’t always voluntary, not for those born into religious communities. They must leave everything behind if they do, which is why it’s hard to leave one’s country of birth too. To just say, “well, it’s voluntary” doesn’t mean real change isn’t necessary and all this talk about how people should just leave skirts the issues and is just a form of willful blindness to the real needs of real people.

See my comment toyou about 20 comments above. Your last comment here is nothing but virtue signaling for yourself. One of the problems with these sorts of venues is that I consider it low class to promote what one does for “real people” around them. At the very least, talking/shaming is not really “doing”. You are aware of that, right?

I find it hilarious that you talk to me about “shaming” when all I do is tell the sjw that their shaming is so very like the shaming done by the evangelical churches, where you have to pay your tithes to get your weekly “shaming” in return. And of course it’s not “doing.” Talking is never doing, which is something the evangelicals have been talking about for years. “Walk the talk” comes to mind. But again, you all assume so much, know so little, which makes these discussions impossible. Present abstract problems, try to find the solution to the problem instead of always going after the person typing, now THAT would actually create a real discussion. In my 10+ years debating fundamentalists I know that when people go after me instead of the argument, they don’t have an argument to present, full stop. So excuse me for being blunt: neither do you.

Susanne, Again, I repeat: Church is voluntary. People CHOOSE to go there to be shamed and give their money for it. Do you want the government regulating that? What is your solution to force them to see things your way”

OTOH, Government isn’t voluntary. The SJW’s who seek to micromanage me through government regulation are my enemies. The church has no hold over me. It’s not like that is where God resides. It’s why I am a DONE. The vast corruption and cult of personality is not something I can tolerate anymore. And I have seen behind many a pulpit. I just don’t expect people to see it the way I do.

That’s one of these things I’m confronted with time and again Lydia,, as if people choose for the church their parents belong to. Is this humanist thought? In islam it is also always the question, whether girls “choose” to wear a hijab. Please, that’s not how it is, or should be. Even if you think you choose, it’s seldom so. Sometimes you live, mostly you are lived, nothing wrong with that.

Dirk, that is a “maturing deficit” especially in Western countries where there is choice…..

Leaving the bubble of authoritarian family or religion/church is hard and I won’t play it down. But it’s possible. I know people who have done it. One is a Palestinian. That’s where it is such great joy to walk with them.

O.K., leaving a church, maybe, at least if you don’t hurt your parents or beloved too much with it (sometimes it hurts, sometimes not), but the church you are born in is a different matter of course. In the case of Susanna (she is scorning us for thinking to know her (and others) details, so I must take care), she bravely wrestled to stay put in belonging to the church of her parents, but she failed in this wrestling, which can be as well a positive as a negative thing, I think. All new agers, yes, chose for that spirituality, but that is a personal matter, and church is much more than that.

Dirk, I am not eschewing how hard it is to leave authoritarian families or religion. Yes, it’s much more. But it’s “possible” in our particular society. Both you and Suzanne keep presenting it as if they are prisoners in the Gulag with no escape. Life is hard. You guys keep presenting it as if people “cannot” escape their roots. That is just not true. A great example of such is George Washington Carver. I think of him because after reading his incredible bio to my then young kids, one of them thanked God for his invention of peanut butter during grace. Lol.

I fear that too many people out there want people to stay oppressed so they can be used for selfish virtue signaling and even worse, paid gigs! Such as are many NGO’s today.

Again, you speak of things you know nothing about. I grew up in an atheist home, joined the church later. My choice to leave was nevertheless painful, as it required painful decisions and I understand why it’s so excruciating for those who were born to it, yet people say “just leave”; the same is said to domestic violence victims. Leaving any societal circle is difficult, hence my critique of those who say religion is a “chosen” milieu. It is for some, but not for all. I believe we all need to learn to extend sympathy towards those who live in ways we aren’t familiar to us, or the slogan “Free Speech Lives Here” becomes “Free Speech Lives Here, But Only If I Agree With Your View Point,” which is the oxymoron a lot of people have met in their days. Either we are free to express our opinions or we aren’t. As far as this forum is concerned, I can tell free speech may live among the writers of the articles, but it doesn’t live with the readers.

Susanna, blog posts are not conducive to detail the efforts that go into helping victims— one on one. Nor is it appropriate because it is an extremely individualized endeavor.

Frankly, all I hear from you is shaming that people don’t empathize enough with the problems you list. I think a lot of good has come out of making abuse in the church known through blogs. But it will never replace “boots on the ground” walking with victims one on one. Sadly, many think it’s the same thing.

You will have to explain to me in detail how I have the power to deny you free speech. By disagreeing with you in comments? You have lost me with that one.

Why would I want to swept into a prisoner category? I’m free and I live as free, and I’m very free to express my opinions regardless of the opinions of others.

And as far as virtue signaling goes, I don’t do that shit, and I call it shit, because it is shit. Either you live your virtues or you don’t. Signaling something you don’t even possess is self-delusion and that’s the worst thing anyone can do to themselves.

Lydia: you just red here how wrong you judged Susanna with that Gulag of yours, she feels a free bird, and be careful how you spell her name, yours is the French and Dutch way of.
Susanna: I sensed immediately that you did not like prisons, and was amazed that Lydia wanted to put both of us there.
Also, amazed that church was your own choice, I did not suppose that because that’s only so for less than 1% (for quite logical reasons, a baby cannot choose, and parents want the best for their offspring, just imagine a child has to learn about all the 24 religions and then to choose). Here, in the NL you see quite some seculars or christians (but also still less than 1% of them) choosing for the islam, however, they never become real muslims, the western type is more an adapted form, like e.g. Elizabeth Jenkins never will become a real Sjaman or Inca priestess. As soon as somebody chooses, he is already a western, because we have personal choices even in our DNA imprinted (metaforically). Besides, for you and Lydia, freedom,I think, is more about speech and opinion , again very western, but the thing I remember from church is: no free speech, and only talk in ritual prayers together with the community, and on command (we were very proud, as altar boys, to know what to say, in Latin, and when, we had not even the slightest idea what it all was about and what it meant, Lam of God that takes away all the sins of the world (and that in Latin), but none of us ever asked the pastor the precise meaning of all this, you just had to join the choir).

Dirk, my gulag comment was in reference to how Susanna views women in churches. As prisoners with no escape. I don’t agree with that do you because I am not a nihilist or a virtue signaler.

We covered that road earlier. You simply moved the goal posts of that discussion —now accusing me of wanting to put her and you, in the gulag. That is uncalled for and leads me to believe that you are a bad actor in this discussion.

I stopped attending any church in 2009 Because my experience in consulting lead me to believe that most are, at hear, corrupt. I am not defending church. I am simply reminding Suzanne I had that church is voluntary and yes, it’s very hard to leave but possible in our society.

Susanna, one more thing, in the many years I was around the world you left, too, I knew many women who were actively propping up the false “complementarian” doctrinal system. Educated, professional women who had careers as accountants, lawyers even local TV personalities! It was definitely a choice to them. Some even became millionaires from the focus women knowing their place, like Beth Moore and her shallow studies.

I wasn’t raised in that world or the world of authoritarian church. I was raised in low church where the pastor was male or female and considered an employee— not a spiritual guru. It was a shock to me when I came back to churches in my late 20’s but it was also big business so I took into consideration the institutions weren’t really all that “spiritual”. That complementarian side of it is dying out in the evangelical realm. Now women like Beth Moore are advocating for a seat at the big tables after making millions off the other side! She is just one example. There is a lot of cult of personality and even money around Jesus circles these days. I opted out of all of it. The Neo Cal resurgence was the last straw. I am not a determinist! From what I could gather, I have more in common with Pelagius who they consider a heretic! Lol.

You see it was all a big cultural game to occupy minds with chaff while raking in money. Now, it’s a new SJW game to recruit the young. Always follow the personalities and money— not their “current” ideology. I suspect you were going to have to find some new oppressed victims to advocate for as the rabid comps of yesterday are now rabid sjws. Funny how that works.

CBE used to be more about Hebrew/Greek scholarship than cultural movements like #metoo and hawking shallow books. That’s too bad.

The main thing, Lydia, I commented on (and, lateron, I saw that Susanna was before me to say so) was that the religion you belong to at birth is no choice (not for all of course, but for 99% it is, I had no idea that Susanna was one of that less than 1%, I wonder even why she admitted this in such a late stage of the thread), and that it can be difficult/painful to leave that religion, but that it all depends of the situation and of your priorities. Nevertheless, it’s something that still haunts me, and, I fear, many other people with a religious background.

And, of course, it’s a huge difference whether you chose for a religion (after God knows how many sleepness nights and discussions and considerations) and whether you had this religion from your parents, as is the case in more than 99% of occasions. I can imagine, in that first case, leaving again is much more painful.
(correction of my commnet here above: choice for a certain religion, not only at birth of course)

Lydia is of the generation that sees women as the bearers of all things, uncompensated, and willingly sacrificing all. When women, especially older women, languish in poverty, they are told they didn’t know “how to please a man.” I’m sick of it, and so are most women.

Dirk, it depends on how one is raised. My father was not religious at all but a man of character and integrity. I say that because such being modeled outside of religion is important for kids to see? Why? Because most religious institutions are extremely corrupt or basically a business with a non profit designation. Many seek to make a living from it. Good luck to them. I am a capitalist pig so that doesn’t bother me. But let’s at least be honest about it. Most aren’t.

Again, you purposely ignore my constant agreement it is HARD to leave. I have agreed with that over and over. And I agree with that and even have help some people leave.

But It’s not impossible. How on earth do you think ANY change in this world happens? People sacrifice and do what is “hard” with no guarantee of success. It’s called life.

Why did I chose the church? It’s highly complicated, but I enjoyed the feeling of being part of a community, doing good, helping the poor and the homeless, feeling and being loved. And then I got married and the whole patriarchal system descended on me like a huge dark cloud. I was no longer allowed to do the things I used to, just because I was married. No more talking to single men, no more doing what I used to. Instead I was told, “Go home and be with your husband!” (who worked 14 hours a day and was never home). I left when the world became too stifling, but it still cost me more than I want to tel you. I did write a novel about it, just in case you want to read my side of the story.

@Lydia

(Quote) “Susanna, blog posts are not conducive to detail the efforts that go into helping victims— one on one. Nor is it appropriate because it is an extremely individualized endeavor.

Frankly, all I hear from you is shaming that people don’t empathize enough with the problems you list. I think a lot of good has come out of making abuse in the church known through blogs. But it will never replace “boots on the ground” walking with victims one on one. Sadly, many think it’s the same thing.

You will have to explain to me in detail how I have the power to deny you free speech. By disagreeing with you in comments? You have lost me with that one.’

Blog posts were my way out. It was my only opportunity to hear that other women agreed with me, knew what I knew. It’s not an individualistic endeavor; it’s a community effort. Why do you think I write so much? It’s because it’s the only medium that is guaranteed to reach those who need to hear the message. A personal friend is risky in situations such as these, but a book or a blog can always be hidden. (End Quote)

I don’t shame people. I endeavor to educate people. I have successfully counseled a lot of women and I get e-mails all the time from women who have read my books or blogs and who thank me for writing them.

You don’t have the power to deny me free speech, but your rudeness and know-it-all attitude is simply off-putting. I agree with @Dirk that you just need to take a step down, because all we hear is your frantic calls to be heard. We’re listening, but you’re not listening to us. And that, of course, is something all church goers have a really hard time letting go.

@Susanna: yes, every life has its own slippery path, keep up, coincidentally, I,m reading “Journey to Q ‘ eros”, Elizabeth Jenkins, who lost her husband by choosing for a new age sort of church/spirituality in the Andes, I still have to read the end, it’s not my kind of literature, but still, for some reason, it haunts me. Another thing: I worked and lived for some years in Lamu, and almost bought the house of a local poet, Mwana Kupona, 19th century, she was a muslim feminist (I think she was) and wrote a booklet for her eldest daughter, in which she expressed, in verses: men are like kids, they want to dominate and play the fool, allow him that feeling, don’t quarrel all the time,better for you and for him, and, in the meantime, do your own thing, with your woman circle. It’s in Swaheli, I wonder whether it’s translated in English. Reading her, I got one of the scarce moments in my life of warm feelings of human unity, a kind of spirituality, I fear. Best wishes and good luck!

I wonder, did you every consider your responsibility and role in that time of your life and not just blame everything on “the patriarchal system” like every 19 yr old feminist does? I mean, you seem like you would a be a really hard person to live with.

Oh @Sarah, you are funny and SO angry, lol.
That you think I don’t take responsibility for my own life is supremely funny for me. I wrote several books on the subject, advocated for change, but met mostly hostile resistance, hence I left. And I’m not the only one; women exit the church in massive numbers, which has prompted even the Southern Baptist Church to modify its policies (a little too late, but still a good direction). So maybe it’s time for you to expand your horizons and realize that life is complicated and that being angry at people who have to make difficult choices is not the way forward.

You say you take responsibility, yet literally in the two sentences following you blame other people. The constant need to put other people between you and responsibility evidences narcissism and helplessness. Why would anyone want to live with someone like that? Introspection, rather than lashing out, may be useful for you here.

In that case, we all agree Lydia. I discussed for about a year on a religious blog, where, to my amazement, mostly young women, spoke with bitterness about their religious upbringing and, in the end, about their leaving that church. My answer to them: I had a very pleasant youth as an altar boy and catholic youngster, though that faith was very strict and authoritative, and not very “child friendly”, if I look back now. If I now pass churches in Spain or Italy I can’t resist to walk in during service, and am amazed still to be able to sing the ritual songs and recitatives in Latin, and shake hands afterwards with believing members of the community. I never had the idea that money or finances play also a role, though, it must play, of course, but never sensed or known so. If only to heat the church and to maintain the buildings and statues.

Thought afterwards Lydia: of course, leaving is all the harder/more painful, where individualism/solipsism is more life imposing. As it is, I think, in US and Northern Europe, and less so elsewhere, though, depending on ones personal situation.

@Susanna: yesterday I thought, enough is enough, the subject has been discussed at length now, but I can’t leave this one: I just read in my newspaper about the daughter of bishop Desmond Tutu, married with a same sex partner in the NL, and, by that, lost her function in the Anglican church of SA, where she was ordained priest (or something) by her father. Ironically, her father always preached for acceptance of the LGTB sector (how this again is possible??), to no avail, but she has been ordained now in some Southern church in the US. What struck me: she was working as a church member for children with difficulties, women and refugees in SA, and found it ” very painful” to be obliged to leave her office. Reading this this morning, of course, I immediately was thinking of your case. ” Complicated”, you wrote, I can imagine, and every case different, but similar also, I fear!

I’m happy in my half-way house of faith and no church. I still believe expanding one’s horizons beyond one’s self is healthy. And yes, church can be great, a beautiful thing. But it can also be really ugly and oppressive. I think humans make it into what they want it to be, and it depends very much of what the rest of society says and does, the Zeitgeist. That’s why I’m also keen to talk about what goes on in society at large, since we’re not born into a vacuum. I do agree that modern feminism has run off the cliff and it about to crash in the ravine below. But it doesn’t mean the work isn’t important. I’ve gotten into heated debates with feminists who completely ignore religious women, saying it’s a choice (as seen here as well), but religion isn’t always a choice, and although it can be sometimes, it doesn’t justify oppression, just as marriage can be voluntary and doesn’t therefore justify oppression. Just because we can leave doesn’t mean we have to be placed in a situation in which we have to make that choice. I wait for the day feminism becomes about women’s rights again instead of a battle for an obtuse ideology.

“What is new is the loss of morale and sense of purpose among men, and this is a cultural rather than an economic change, arising out of the libertarian assault on sex roles. Men are bombarded with the message that modern women value the opportunity for self-realization through work. So the chivalrous thing to do these days is for men not strive too hard to hold down a job or seek promotion, but stand aside and let women go for it themselves. This is the root of contemporary male economic and educational failure, and the reason why there are increasing numbers of unemployed men even though the total number of jobs remains stable.” Women have gotten better grades in school since before that started: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-a0036620.pdf.

The root problem with this piece is it is based on the idea that the only way for a man to be morally and psychologically fulfilled is to be a responsible family man. Some men are asexual. Some men just are not interested in monogamy.

Wow, Britain is worse off than I thought. And I wasn’t that impressed in the first place. This article reads like a parody of feminist ideas. “Prioritizing male or female work” sounds way patronizing in either direction. Why not take your rights back, remove the cameras, allow gun ownership (no I don’t mean in a “nanny” club — have some pride!), adjust your strangling libel laws, dump some regulation, and find an elite who don’t look like they are their own first cousins (Is this where Ickes got his idea of lizard people?) Britain is the cradle of so many powerful ideas and works. You kicked butt in WWII. Come back!! We are rooting for you!!